No Strange Land
by elwisty
Summary: It was going to be a short trip to a familiar place, and she'd be back in time for dinner tomorrow...
1. Chapter 1

_No Strange Land: Chapter 1_

"Not a bad day for it."

"Have you packed the harness and bag like I said?"

"Not like the ride to Leilon last month. We shoulda taken canoes along the roads instead of horses."

"Don't like the state of the surface between the tenth mile post and the start of the pass at Old Owl Well. It's wasn't a highway anymore, last time I was there – more of a paddling pool for orcs and lost cows."

"Got it."

"What about the mosquito nets?"

"Got them."

"You don't want to know what that road up there's going to do to your hind-parts...after I went that way, they were-"

"I don't want to know, you're right, so keep your trap shut, my darling!"

"What about the silk cushions for the Captain? Did you bring them?" Lila came out of her doze on hearing her title, and was puzzled.

"Silk cushions? The Quartermaster didn't say anything about silk cushions."

"Coz he expected you to know, didn't he?"

"And the druid's magic attack rabbits, Luan? Don't tell me you forgot those?" Ah. It was the Baiting Luan game again. She let herself drift off. Her horse was doing the work. Perhaps she could delegate Knight Captaining in its entirety to Sorrel the black mare.

"Yeah. The ones that grow wings and fly at the King of Shadows going, "Kree! Kree! Kree!" like eagles."

"What's lovely Nell doing with us? She's not coming to the ruins, for sure."

"Not likely. She might break a nail."

"Or put her golden locks out of curl, Tyr 'vert the day."

"Who's Nell?" Snorts of illicit laughter.

"So what's happening? Who really is going to the ruins? Am I going?"

"No, fathead, you're going to Highcliff with Sir Casavir."

" _Flying attack rabbits_? You bastards."

"Had you going for a while there, didn't we?"

"Was any of it true?"

"Nope."

Lila's attention fell on a scarecrow in the kitchen garden of one of the new farmhouses that Shandra had designed, and whose foundation stone she had laid the previous summer. A broad baldric, red cloak and cap studded with a trail of seven stars suggest the uniform of the Flaming Fist, the half-civil half-mercenary guards of Baldur's Gate. One gauntlet hung loosely from the wooden arm on the right; its twin had fallen off altogether. Despite that, it was a rather debonair scarecrow, inclusive of the frilly underwear that, in a daring fashionable coup, it wore on top of its breeches.

Only in these lands, Lila thought, would armour be so cheap that it could be put out in the rain and wind, where it would fail to intimidate any birds whatsoever. Only in this corner of the world, afflicted by spite of gods and Luskans, open to the mountain tribes and the westerly storms, would the inhabitants rejoice in pillorying a representative of Neverwinter's single reliable ally. But then, old rivalries on the Sword Coast never die, they simply become pantomime.

A trumpet blew a complicated sequence of blasts in a major key. The straggling company had been spotted by the lookout at the watch tower near the crossroads from which the keep took its name. She hummed the notes of the call to herself, enjoying their crooked melody. Really, it was a pleasant little tune. A pity she had no idea precisely what it meant. The Grey Cloaks had over a thousand trumpet calls, and many of them dated back centuries – a few, they claimed, originated during the Illefarn Empire. She had once suggested to General Callum that at most twenty were really necessary, and wouldn't it be more economical to train his soldiers to fight rather than to blow raspberries of wonderful accuracy into beaten silver tubes? He had given her a measured look. 'You're not a bad lass and you can handle yourself well enough in a set-to," he'd said. "But you're not military in here." He'd tapped his chest. "So you leave the soldiering to me, and I'll leave you the fireworks and glory."

She was looking around for someone to bother about trumpet signals, when a pale hand appeared on her horse's bridle, presumably readied to give it a wrench if the human burden in the saddle said the wrong thing. "A moment of your time, 'Knight Captain'."

"Good morning, Ammon." If he was bothering with irony, his temper must have improved since last night.

"Are you still resolved to lead this mission?"

"Yep." She kept her eyes on the twitching ears of her horse, while Ammon kept his hand on the creature's cheek piece. They were both mounted on placid mares as usual, and no doubt to the despair of Neeshka, who, with the aid of a piece of charcoal and a linen napkin, had developed a Theory of Horsiness in the tavern one evening. According to the theory, every person chose the steed that would most accord with their desired persona. Thus Kana rode an elegant bay, which was haughtily indifferent to flies, the weather and the clash of arms; Elanee perched bareback on a half-wild chestnut pony; Casavir and Khelgar had both chosen geldings, though Khelgar's stood over a hand taller, and preferred jumping fences to waiting for the gate to be opened. Most subject to discussion and smirks – potentially libellous smirks, in Neeshka's case- was Prince, a swingingly uncut stallion with a high neck, hot temper, and a disapproving expression it that had learnt from its owner, Sir Nevalle, the present from His Highness the Lord Protector of Neverwinter His Grace the Lord Nasher that no one wanted.

Ammon nudged his horse, which should have been a dragon, into a trot and circled Lila, so that he was riding on her right side and was at liberty to direct his remarks away from the ears of the troop, and straight into Lila's.

"You should reconsider," he said flatly. She opened her mouth to argue. "- But clearly you're set on this foolish course -"

"-it's not foolish -" she hissed back to him. "I've told you why it should be me – you admitted the reasons are valid -"

"I did nothing of the sort. What I recall saying is that those reasons of yours might appear valid to a naive barmaid with a limited flair for playing the hero. Send Casavir. Or Khelgar. Better, send both, and it will keep them usefully occupied and out of my way. Or ask me."

" _Ask_?" Lila raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

She sighed. No point trying to have two arguments with him at the same time. "Never mind. But listen, if I shouldn't go, then neither should you. Without you the ritual won't work, anymore than if I don't come back." She felt her palms prickle in discomfort. By now, she should have accustomed herself to speaking about the outcome she was most keen to avoid; still, the most basic reflexes of her body wouldn't go along with the lie of serenity. "Besides," she said in a tone of practised lightness, "I've completed far more dangerous tasks. Fought demons. Fought shadows. Fought you. And I've never yet failed to get back safely, and make sure my friends do as well – except once. There was this one time I couldn't bring them all back."

She held her breath, rather hoping that he'd let rip. Instead, he let go of his hold on Lila's horse, and stared straight ahead at the horizon. A muscle flickering near his left temple was his only response for several moments.

Lila rubbed her horse's flank. Despite his ruthlessness, paranoia and questionable taste in body art, he was occasionally capable of showing a strange kind of grace that she half-envied, half-pitied. She waited till he made eye contact again.

"I'm not here to fight with you, Farlong. You've clearly made up your mind already – or had it made up for you by the zerth priestess-"

"-Ammon-"

"- and you need to be aware of the risks. His power is growing everyday. The last time you travelled to those ruins was a year ago or more – you must be on your guard. If you drop it – if you become complacent, even for a short time - then there will not be a second chance."

"I'm not sure that terrifying me before I properly start helps. It's thirty miles, most of it on the main road to Old Owl Well." She remembered the arena gates closing behind her, locking her into a trap in which Lorne Starling waited, falchion drawn, as trapped as her and determined to find an escape through her death. Just one mistake... "I will be vigilant. But there are limits to how much I can focus on invisible, undetectable enemies that might be lurking behind the next tree, or might be a hundred miles away in the Mere."

"Our enemy has not confined himself to his territory in the Merdelain for some considerable time. And you will know if you're sufficiently watchful – because you'll still be alive. Now pay attention and remember what I tell you, since I do not care to repeat myself: the King and his forces are most powerful at dawn and dusk. Travel for you is thus safest at night and in day when the sun is high in the sky. Don't light any fires unless you plan on using a flaming torch as a weapon. Otherwise eat your food cold and tell your men to sleep in their cloaks, if they must sleep. Stay away from the outskirts of forests where mixed light and shade cover the floor, and walk on the northern sides of hills. Avoid the southern. And keep away from ruins."

"The entire point of this mission is to visit the biggest fucking group of ruins between the sea and the mountains!" She felt balanced on the point of a pyramid, whose base was formed by laughter, exasperation and – yes, there it was, her old friend – fear.

"Which is why you must not linger for longer than absolutely necessary. And – though no doubt it could not have escaped the notice of such a _true hero_ as yourself – the hills and valleys between you and your target were Illefarn heartlands once too. The whole area is pock-marked with grottoes, towers and old trading roads that date from that era. You don't know about them, Lila, but I assure you – they know about you."

He fell silent.

Rue for her earlier behaviour stung her conscience. She reached out and stopped a little short of touching his white wrist. His skin seemed almost transparent seen against his horse's dull coat. "I will remember. Thank you."

His eyes narrowed. "Keep your thanks. And try not to die on a fool's errand." He pulled his horse around abruptly, and cantered back towards the gates of the Keep. As soon as he was gone, she regretting not inviting him to join the party. He was staying behind to work on the castle's defences, along with Grobnar, Sand, Khelgar, and the acting deputy Knight Captain – since Kana was of the opinion that Crossroad Keep needed an official leader at all times apart from her, and no one dared argue with Kana. Though Neeshka might not be quite who the seneschal had expected.

She looked back over her shoulder at the familiar bend in the road that led up to the Keep's plateau, and at Ammon Jerro about to disappear round it. His horse slowed as it approached the pot holes and rocks that had been causing problems on that section of the track since the spring rains; she saw Ammon straighten his back, adjust his position in the saddle, pull on the reins. And, losing sight of him, in the same moment she saw another rider trot into view. Armoured from head to toe, the only clues to the rider's identity were the blonde strands of hair lying unevenly on the gorget, and the feminine set of the hips. Lila's pulse accelerated, then slowed, and she admonished herself, "It's just Katriona. There're no ghosts in my army."

But what was Katriona doing out here? As far as Lila could recall, Katriona was supposed to be busied with refining the ability of the latest gaggle of juvenile cadets to point a crossbow in the right direction. Well, she would find out soon.

The front of the troop, with Sir Nevalle at its head, was already at the crossroads. They reined in their horses. A flurry of movement. Braying and bucking. Nevalle's stallion was annoyed at the halt. It brayed again, and the bray turned into a lunge as it tried to nip the shoulder of a neighbouring gelding. Its master's arm rose and fell sharply; from the back of the procession, the sound of the tanned leather of a riding crop meeting the unworked hide of Prince. The stallion quieted, pacified.

Still, Lila took care to give both knight and mount a wide berth as she set her mare trotting up past the line of freshly-minted cavalry.

"Nice weather for a day at the seaside," she said to Casavir after locating him in the group at the crossroads. "Don't build too many sandcastles while you're at Highcliff," she said, remembering too late that levity just made Casavir depressed, as, in fact, did almost everything under the sun.

"It is, indeed, a pleasant morning," said Casavir, looking like a rainy day at the wrong end of autumn. Poor fellow.

"Sure you've got everything you need?"

"We are amply provisioned, and I have enough men to do a far more difficult task than the one you allotted me. More than enough, truth be told." He hesitated. Lila was fairly sure she knew what was coming. "Zhjaeve is fully capable of overseeing the safe migration of the lizard folk to the Keep." She looked around, noting the gith's absence, before it dawned on her that the priestess would most likely use her powers of teleportation to reach Highcliff. Githezerai didn't approve of equestrianism. The bridles, saddles and bits made the animals look too much like slaves. "I think a better use of my abilities would be to support you in your mission. Zhjaeve agrees – would prefer you to stay at Crossroad Keep, in fact."

That meant that Zhjaeve and Ammon for once had a common opinion as well as a common cause. Both would undoubtedly be distressed if they ever learned of it.

"This journey is important," said Lila. "Sand and Aldanon think that even a small fragment of one of the statues could be enough to work with. Imagine if we were able to thread the enchantment through the curtain walls..."

Casavir shook his head. His long eyebrows sank downward like the plunging necks of cormorants. "But why must you...-" he broke off.

"Captain!" It was Katriona. She had taken off her helmet. A scarlet line stood out on her chin. Not a terribly deep scar, it was perhaps the result of an overenthusiastic sword drill. Dramatic, all the same. "At your service." She didn't salute, but gave a clipped nod.

"Katriona!" said Casavir. "I thought you were with the recruits."

"I was. Sergeant Bevil has charge of them at present. I believe they can do without me for a few days, if necessary. Though Bevil is too gentle with them," she said, not disparagingly or humorously, but with flat honesty. "Captain," she said, turning again to Lila, "Please let me go on the mission."

"Casavir was just saying that he had plenty in the way of men..." 

"Not with him," she replied, not looking at the paladin. "Let me go with you."

"Well – I already -" began Lila.

"I think this idea has much merit," said Casavir.

"But -"

"And you are short of one person owing to Qara's ill health," Casavir continued. That was true. Qara had been supposed to accompany her to Illefarn, however, the teenager had fallen victim to one of the violent, sudden and unpredictable fits of general unwellness she suffered from whenever asked to do something she didn't want to. Bishop might have been useful too, but was out scouting near the southern edge of the Merdelain.

"I need to get away from the Keep for a while, Lila," the blonde urged. "My strength, my sword arm- they're getting weaker by the day. I can't train recruits if I've forgotten what the world is like beyond the walls..."

Lila tried not to sigh. "Fair enough. You're welcome to join us. No one else is coming, right? You don't have Grobnar hidden in those saddle-bags?" She'd better damn well not have.

Like her former leader, Katriona understood humour, but preferred not to participate in it. "No, Captain. I've packed my own provisions, and know the lands between here and the old Illefarn city better than most. With your permission, I will go and inform the soldiers and Elanee of the change." She paused, and scanned the gathered confusion of infantry on horseback. She seemed almost alarmed. "Where is Elanee? I understood that she would accompany you."

There was no sign of the slight druid. While Elanee could be very discreet, she was rarely actually invisible.

"She left the Keep earlier this morning to visit the Farnhowe woodlands," said Casavir, volunteering the information almost eagerly. "There is a shrine there that is revered by her kind. She said she would be waiting for you at the first milestone."

Katriona nodded in acknowledgement. Briefly, in the gap between one heartbeat and the next, Lila had thought she saw the sergeant's face flicker from blankness into something else. But the moment was gone, and she might have imagined it.

"Glad to hear we haven't lost any more of the group to that deadly midsummer chill of Qara's," said Lila. "I never know when or how it's going to strike. Are you planning to break the journey anywhere?" she asked Casavir. "I don't think the landlord of the _Cuckoo's Nest_ would be happy to find a hundred or so giant talking lizards in his kitchen garden."

"The _Cuckoo's Nest_ has been closed for some time," said Casavir. "The landlord felt it would be prudent to go and stay with relatives in Lantan."

"Ah."

"But I do not expect that a stop will prove necessary. The lizardmen are a hardly folk, and have no more wish to tarry out in the open than I do to encourage them to it."

"Good," said Lila, feeling her words starting to become detached from her mind and emotions, as they often did when speaking to her more rigorously sensible and mature associates. "We can't afford to lose them. Or provoke them into blockading Highcliff again." Not that a blockade would have much effect. All but the most stubborn inhabitants had left. At least the destruction of West Harbour had proved to be an effective scourge for driving the most threatened populations into safer territories. Or, as Ammon would probably have put it, into 'safer' territories. If the lizard tribe were to resume hostilities now, they'd be lucky to find an old woman, a lame sheepdog and a few angry chickens in arms against them.

"You need have no concern. about that. Elanee has taught me about their culture, manners and traditions. I will give them no offence, nor reason to doubt our good faith."

"I know you won't," said Lila. "There's no one I trust to do this more than you." She made an effort to pay Casavir compliments on a fairly regular basis; he had tolerated her sporadically zealous bouts of leadership for almost two years without complaining very often, and without trying to take control of the group, of the castle or of her. Which reminded her...

"Sir Nevalle! Parting is such sweet sorrow."

"I take it that you're ready to go then, Captain?" The knight swivelled himself round in the saddle. He must have decided that it was easier for him to turn a quarter circle than to persuade his horse to do it for him.

"Ready and eager. And I'm sure Lord Nasher will be delighted to learn of the state of the Keep and the garrison. We could repel all the hosts of the upper and lower planes from behind those walls."

Nevalle gave a pale smile. "His Lordship will no doubt rejoice to hear it, but only expects that the walls are sufficiently strong to resist the one army."

"And so they are. Go well, Sir Nevalle. I'm sure that fine horse of yours will have you carried to Neverwinter and back before the geese in the bailey have noticed you're missing." Unkind to bring up the castle's resident gang of bad-tempered geese. One of them once shat on Nevalle's gloriously expensive boots, then tore off a strip from the back of his tunic for good measure. Khelgar still liked to open dinners with a toast to Nipknackers the Goose, while Sand wanted to make it Captain of the Guard.

Nevalle dragged his horse's head round towards the north road, which would join the great High Road after a mile or so. The way was secure enough these days; much more secure than the first time Lila had traversed it. That was several years ago. With his four mounted bodyguards squared around him, he'd be an unattractive target for bandits, and too fast for most of the undead. In response to his waved glove, Lila raised her hand. She fought the reflexive desire to turn the gesture into a flamboyant blown kiss. Sometimes knightly decorum comes with a cost, but she had sworn to herself last year that she would act the part that had been practically thrown at her. The likes of Nevalle wouldn't cause her to fall out of character.

As soon as Sir Nevalle had departed with his escort, it was time to bid adieu to Casavir and his dragoons, newly trained to sit a horse without clamping their thighs to the flanks out of nerves.

"Zhjaeve said something strange to me yesternight," said Casavir. "She said that she did not _know_ your reasons. She feared that your heart did not believe in them."

"Zhjaeve says a lot of strange things."

"But if you listen closely, there is often much of worth in her thoughts. She said that the sword will break again if the heart and mind and soul of the wielder are not in harmony with the blade." She shivered. The thought of the sword breaking terrified her; she couldn't recall the first time it had happened, yet dreamed of it so often that the event was always there somewhere in her head, ready for the curtain to rise on a grim spectacle. Houses burning in the distance. Her mother, dark and long like her, slumped next to the body of her best friend, and between them a baby, crying and crying, a spot of blood on its chest.

She closed her eyes, and opened them again on bright sunshine and blue skies. "Are you thinking of becoming a paladin of Zerthimon?"

"Such paladins cannot exists. But there are many equivalences between the Tyrran faith and the teachings of Zerthimon. That to act well, one must first know yourself, for example." Casavir paused, and frowned. "Where is the sword?"

His eyes darted down to the old sabre that Ammon had lent her from one of his not-very-secret secret weapons stashes. It wasn't the sword that Casavir had in mind. What he was thinking of was a blade that could make poets tongue-tied, a blade hovering between existence and non existence, between one dimension and another. Shadows melted away in its presence; humans too were easy prey. Its wielder need have no fear of man, or beast, or monster. "Ah, yes. The Sword. I'm leaving it behind."

"..."

"It's in safe hands."

"Did you give the sword to Neeshka?" Casavir really thought she might have given the Silver Sword of Gith to Neeshka. Lila was all for offering her friend a chance to prove herself, and demonstrating her trust and belief in her abilities, but she knew where to draw the line.

"Oh no. No." She bit her lip. The part of her that didn't much like Knight Captaining was giggling madly behind a closed door in her brain. "It's in metaphorical hands, in fact. In a closet. A real closet with a lock."

"..you must wield it soon, Lila."

"It's not a weapon suited for every day wear."

"Perhaps not for me, or for the others, but the piece of it lodged in you has made it yours."

"It's the piece of it lodged in me that makes me reluctant to wield it." Lila rubbed her temples, noting that Casavir looked if anything even gloomier than when their conversation started.

"Have you brought your gauntlets at least?"

"I'm not completely insane. They're in my pack." She wasn't strong. The enchanted gauntlets that Grobnar had gifted her helped make up for that. "Anyway, I shall hope to see you in two day's time. With the lizard folk behind you. Behind you in a friendly way, of course."

"I wish you well in your own mission. And please – take no fooli- forgive me – no unnecessary risks. It's not just your life that stands to be lost."

Before Lila could vocalize her surprise at the unpaladinlike parting sentiment, he had turned and trotted away. His little troop fell in behind him.

"That leaves us then." Lila looked back to the thick, familiar walls of the Keep. Her Keep, if only on paper. Perhaps the Gods themselves didn't know how long it would stay hers. She breathed in and out slowly. Not the time to show weakness. "Everyone ready? Did you bring the flying attack rabbits, soldier?" The latter question was addressed to Luan, who had charge of the wagon.

"No, Captain." Luan appeared deeply worried. He was seventeen. Too easy to pick on. It was unfair and, besides, the older men – Chantler, Draygood and another, a grizzled ex-farmer with an eye-patch whose name she couldn't recall – they wouldn't respect her for it, no doubt viewing it as an invasion of their territory.

"Have to manage without, in that case. Got food in those sacks?" 

For a moment, he looked panicked. Then his face cleared. He leant right and tapped a sack that was bulky with promise. "Oh yes, Captain."

"Good!" He beamed, then swayed as he lost his balance on the narrow driver's seat. Chantler grabbed his arm and held him upright. Gods, have pity on us.

"No more of this hanging about then," she said, and hoped very much that she sounded bolder than she felt. "Let's be off." And she walked Sorrel round to the west, and nudged and clapped her into what was almost a gallop. The last few years might have considerably sapped her adventure lust, but on a fair summer's morning atop a reliable horse, and with at least five miles of well-surfaced road ahead, the misgivings, which Ammon and Casavir and almost everyone else had implanted, began to fade. Though the open road might not call to her, it was beginning to whisper. She willed herself to listen.

The air was sweet, and neither chilly nor humid, and blossoming elder trees stood here and there along the road's southern border. A mile further on, and they were crowding down on both sides,with mature birch and ash behind them. Farnhowe. It was the last coppice of southernmost end of the south-eastern leg of Neverwinter Wood.

As she let her horse slow to a trot, the soldiers and Katriona came up around her.

"How far is it to the ruins?" asked Eyepatch.

"Thirty nine miles,"said Katriona without expression.

"And on good roads?" asked Chantler.

"Tolerably good. We follow the Great East Road for around thirty miles, then dive off to the north on a track between two hills, and follow the bank of a stream for the remaining distance. We should be back at the Keep in time for dinner tomorrow." Although her voice showed no warmth, she did smile faintly as the soldiers cheered.

"Sounds like my kind of expedition." Chantler took a dim view of special missions, and never bothered to hide it.

"All you ever want to do is have dinner, Chants," said an unknown with curly red hair. Lila wondered how to find out his name without revealing that she didn't know it already.

"Can't fight a battle on an empty stomach. Didn't someone famous say that?"

"You do, Chantler – every single day," said Lila.

"Ah, but I'm not famous."

"Nonsense" she said. "Every cook in the Keep's kitchens has your face in their memory. You're a living legend in the pantry of every inn between Highcliff and Neverwinter."

"It's that way with words that made Nasher drop that blue tunic over your head for sure. 'Living Legend'. You're making me blush, lassie."

"Captain," correct Katriona, speaking crisply with the effect that everyone in the group heard her admonishment. "Her title is Captain."

Lila felt the focus of ten pairs of eyes solidifying on her back. She gripped the reins hard. Katriona was just doing her job, in her own colossally tactless, badly-timed way. And she couldn't side with the men in preference to her sergeant over something trivial like this. She kept silent.

"Yes, of course, sergeant. My apologies, Captain."

Lila nodded. Chantler didn't make eye contact. Both she and Katriona were barely half his age.

No one spoke, and the remainder of the journey to the first milestone was unrelieved by chatter amongst the soldiers. At least there was birdsong. Not the strange hoots and wheets and ghostly sighs of the creatures from her reed-and-willow homeland, nor the wailing of the seagulls above her uncle's tavern in Neverwinter's docks district, but the songs birds should sing, which travellers spoke about with longing. Scales and whistles, bubbling and peeling notes and melodies, whose singers perched just out of sight in the highest branches.

The first milestone came and went. Then the second milestone.

On either side of them, the forest pressed in. When she had visited the working party near this spot last year with Shandra, she'd watched two men sawing through the trunk of a ten foot birch that had seemingly forced its way up through the remains of a layer of gravel, and through fragments of paving stone. Now the road formed a reassuringly clear line between the walls of fluttering green and white, and was filled with the sweet odours of elder blossom, and the less sweet yet still pleasant smell of horse, leather and mail.

"Elanee should be here by now," said Katriona. The sergeant had wanted to stop at the first milestone, and been overruled. Elanee was unlikely to have got into serious trouble on such familiar ground. The druid would show up when she wanted to show up.

"So, Knight Captain," said the anonymous Eyepatch, "why are we going out there again? Her Grace the Seneschal said you'd been there before and got what you wanted. And that's what they say in the barracks too, so I reckon there's truth in it."

She glanced at him. He reminded her a little of Bishop. A Bishop who'd lost his right eye, and gained twenty-five years and a level of equanimity in return. "It is truth. We went there last summer to acquire the ritual of purification."

"The what of what?"

Oh. She'd forgotten that no one outside of her associates and Lord Nasher's council had been kept abreast of developments. By now the garrison probably had some strange ideas about how she passed the time. Hopefully they thought she wrestled the King of Shadows every morning and afternoon. It would nicely complement the rumour about her being the re-embodied spirit of Lord Halueth, the founder of Neverwinter. She liked that one. Sometimes she charmed her eyes to glow an otherworldly blue just to give it legs.

"The ritual of purification..." she said, hesitating over how much to tell him, for the story was a long one, and she could never quite settle on the best starting point,"...was a kind of enchantment designed to give special powers to the person who completed it. The ritual was divided into five parts, and the parts were interwoven into the fabric of five statues. The magicians of the Illefarn Empire created it long ago when they realized the Guardian would return."

She registered the incomprehension on his face.

"We call him the King of Shadows. He was human, once. Some say from Netheril. He volunteered to have his identity destroyed as the first stage in a spell that would turn him into the all-powerful Guardian of the Illefarn. The spell worked, and Illefarn was safe – for a while. Then he drew on the shadow plane for power when the Weave failed, and the Guardian became the King of Shadows. The Illefarn attacked him – from fear or guilt, I don't know – and were broken. And that's why we're in this mess, and on a two day trek to the middle of nowhere.

"Jerro and me – we completed the ritual last year. Our enemies broke the statues after that, but Sand and Aldanon think that if we can get hold of some fragments we might be able to learn something about how the enchantment was woven. It could help the Keep defences."

Eyepatch's look of incomprehension started to diminish. "So the King of Shadows isn't a demon prince summoned by Luskan to destroy Neverwinter?"

"No. He'd like to destroy Luskan too. Unfortunately, Neverwinter is between him and the Luskans, so we can't just leave him to it."

Eyepatch was chewing his lower lip and frowning. It was a lot of information to absorb at once. She really should brief the garrison properly when she got back to Crossroad Keep. Assuming that someone else was doing it had been a mistake. Someone else had clearly assumed that she was briefing them. "You all really think he's a demon prince from Luskan?"

"Not all of us, Captain," Chantler interjected. "I was told it was a kind of dark spirit of revenge, come back to punish us for what happened to Aribeth and the Hero of Neverwinter, saving your presence, Captain. The last one."

Lila gave a carefully exaggerated shudder. "Urgh. That's worse than the reality of the threat. Still, whatever he is, demon or wildman, spirit or pirate, shadow or scarecrow – he's for us to fight and for us to make rue the day he woke up now, and not a hundred years from now – when we may not be as handy with a sword as formerly." As inspiring speeches went, it wasn't one of her best. But it had the virtue of being short. She had listened to a great number of inspiring speeches over the last year, and had quickly concluded that the majority of speakers were only capable of inspiring a kind of numb torpor.

"Don't know about you, Cap -" he shot a look in Katriona's direction "-tain, but if I make it through the next big battle, I'm sticking my sword in the earth and training sweet peas around the hilt."

"Really? Why sweet peas?"

"Coz I pray for sweet peace in Neverwinter every day."

She groaned. "That's a terrible, terrible joke. If you were an officer, I'd have you court martialed on the spot. "

"But you can't, coz I'm not. Can't tell you how many times I've had Lord Nasher on my doorstep begging me to take promotion. But I'll have none of it. I'm a soldier's soldier, Captain."

"Well, soldier's soldier, if you want to grow sweet peas, you can borrow some proper canes from their current role as public servants of Neverwinter in the Keep's potting sheds. We can afford you so much to stop you putting a good sword to waste."

"Aw, that's generous. Makes the last year of carrying your swag up and down the coast seem worthwhile now that I think about it."

"Kana wouldn't let me carry my own loot for fear I ran away with it to start an import-export business in the Moonshaes. You can't take all of the canes, mind you. I want to hold on to some in case I can figure out why Shandra bought so many of the fucking things. You can have the rest if you defeat the King of Shadows for me."

"Har har. You're hilarious, you are. A real jester." One day Lila would find out why Chantler had enlisted. Since asking other Greycloaks had elicited family tragedies that dwarfed her own – Medir, the solemn Cormyrian, possessed one such – she preferred not to make a direct enquiry.

"Shandra? The blonde lass with the temper who planted all those apple trees? Haven't seen her round lately." Lila decided that she'd handed out enough truths that day, and summoned up the usual lie, asking herself as she did so how often now she'd lied for Ammon Jerro. This time, Chantler saved her the bother.

"Holy bleeding Ilmater, man, is that eye-patch just a distraction to stop anyone realizing you're deafer and dumber and stupider than a ninety-nine year old bugbear that was raised by Amnish donkeys."

"What?" said Lila.

"What?" said Eyepatch. "First, Amnish aren't stupid. How do you think they got all that money? And second, what's the problem? I was just asking about the girl coz of not having seen her, nothing wrong with that."

"The grandfathers of the Amnish got them their money. This lot now just sit about on their hindmost-parts all day drinking wine, or go to their big parks to hunt sheep with horns stuck on their forehead painted with tiger stripes. And Shandra's dead, poor thing – been dead for almost a year."

Funny how those words, hearing them again though their information was far from new, made some part of her feel raw all over again. Grief or shame, or grief and shame. Whatever it was, it hurt. That name came pierced through with slivers of so many uncomfortable feelings, too fine to pick out individually.

"Why, Chantler, you're a regular encyclopaedia. You could rival Volo," she joked weakly. Eyepatch had fallen silent.

She looked around. The soldiers behind them were listening as one of them – Olly or Rowly or Wally or something like that – recited an old story about the fateful love of an elven warrior for a kobold maiden. The tale had been a well-known one in West Harbour, so much so that she could anticipate each line before it was uttered.

" _She smiled at him_

 _Her fangs all pearly white_

 _She looked at him_

 _Her eyes so serpent-bright._

 _'Oh Ugleg, dear, you are my fair one._

 _And no other girl but you_

 _Do I so fondly view_

 _My lovely rare one.'"_

Lila shook her head, and trotted away to draw level with Katriona, the small and select vanguard of one. Her mood, after the mention of Shandra, felt equal to speaking with her sergeant. She examined the woman anew. White-blonde hair, wide forehead, full lips. An ex-farmer, ex guerilla warrior with a heavy frame.

"No sign of Elanee," the woman said by way of acknowledgement.

"No."

"Perhaps she has encountered trouble."

"I doubt it. So close to home and in these woods? She's in her element."

"Crossroad Keep is not her home."

"It's all she has."

"The druid sees it differently. A monument to human ingenuity such as your Keep can never be a home to her."

"Gnomish ingenuity," said Lila, weighing her current wish to form a better relationship with Katriona against her perennial desire to prickle the flesh of the sombre and grand, a thistle amongst camelias. She opted for the prickles.

"I'm sorry, Captain?"

"Most of the ingenuity when the Keep was first built came from gnomes. Humans just did the grunt work."

"Oh."

They dropped into silence. Conversations with Katriona often tended more towards it than not. The result was that Lila felt an emotion akin to stage-fright seize her whenever she saw Katriona's rounded face approach. She was that most difficult of audiences: one that distrusted laughter.

"Are you angry with me?"

Lila had been scrutinizing the magnificent trunk of an oak that grew like a gnarled old spring out of the northern bank. Now she jerked her head up. "Angry? Why should I be angry?"

"Because I forced my way into this mission – I wasn't properly invited -"

"But I'm glad to have you with us." She wasn't. "I may have not said it at the time – I was just surprised to anyone volunteered. Normally I need to twist people's arms to get them involved in this kind of thing. No prospect of loot for Neeshka, no glory for Khelgar, no – whatever it is Casavir wants – divine approval, perhaps."

"Oh, I think he wants more than that. I'm sure he does. And you do him an injustice, for he asked your permission to go with you more than once."

"He's more effective where he is."

"Yes. But I did not wish to talk of Casavir. I also thought I had angered you because I reprimanded one of the soldiers. Chantler. Tell me, am I wrong?"

There were many winding channels through which Lila could worm her way out of a frank answer. Unfortunately, all of them would make her sound as if she was worming her way out of a frank answer. She hesitated. She might as well have said, 'Yes.'

"I understand your displeasure. When I first joined the fighters up in the mountains by Old Owl Well, we had no ranks. Our leader was a true first among equals, elected by the fighters, each with an equal voice. For a while, everyone was still the best of friends. Ate and drank together, celebrated together, danced together. Then he ordered a party to scout out the enemy positions. All but one were caught. Those who were caught never returned. After that, he stopped drinking with the "lads" and they stopped calling him out to play ball games with them. You can't be friends with people and send them to die. You can't love them and let them risk their lives instead of you."

"What happened to your chief?" A warm breeze blew into Lila's face. She stared up at the pure blue sky, searching for clouds.

"He died a month later in battle against the Bonegnasher clan. And then we chose a new chief, and he fought, and he died too," she said, and added matter-of-factly, "They were both heroes."

"And then?"

"Not long after, Casavir arrived. Our Katalmach. I resigned so that the remains of our band would choose him as leader. They did, and you know the rest."

"What was he like, your first leader?"

"Brave. A terror to his enemies. A balm to the hearts of his soldiers."

"What was his name?"

Katriona's brow creased. "Talim. Or perhaps Talion. Something of the sort."

So much for him then. So much for the undying fame of the martyr. She remembered once how, on an evening of drunken self-pity, she had told Ammon to at least make sure Nevalle spelled her name right on the tasteless fake marble edifice he would no doubt erect _in glorious memory,_ if given half a chance. Then the carnival float would move on to find some other dumb fuck to be hero of Neverwinter.

"I have never sent my men to die."

"Not yet," said Katriona. "Captain."

Silence reinserted itself between the two women. They passed the third milestone. A thrush was perched on its rough crest.

"Finally!" said Lila. "The troupe's all here. Hola, Elanee!"

"Elanee? Where?"

Lila pointed towards the thrush, just as a shaking began to run up and down its delicate feathers, and then, in place of a bird, a russet-haired elf was perched on the moss-covered slab, which looked as ancient as its burden looked young and blossoming.

She waited for the group without looking at them. Her hands lay lightly on the edge of the milestone, seemingly ready to bend and spread once more, to lift her into the air and away.

"We were expecting you earlier," said Katriona.

Elanee shrugged. "You have been in the territory of Crossroad Keep till now and had little need of me. I decided to circle the hilltop and read what the land could tell me. All was still, and peaceful. In truth, as long as your men are careful not to bring the wrath of the local orc tribe down upon us, I foresee few difficulties." She narrowed her eyes. Was that misgiving? Lila found it hard to judge. Few outward signs betrayed Elanee's inner life, if, indeed, she had one. It sometimes seemed plausible that she was really a laurel tree that some priapic god had transformed into the likeness of a beautiful woman, in a change from the usual procedure. "But it could all change between one breath and the next. Such is the way of things."

What an amusing journey this would be, spent wedged between the rock and the hard place, the frying pan and the fire. At least the soldiers were coming along with them, though they seemed to have fallen silent, the better to gawp at Elanee. The elf was an elusive presence at the Keep; most of them had probably never heard her speak.

"Such is the way of things," Lila echoed. "Does that mean I should have brought my oil-skin cloak?"

"I packed that, Captain," said Luan.

"Great job," she said. His apple cheeks blushed pink. He must be younger than Qara. If only the sorceress had his temperament.

Elanee mounted the chestnut pony that had been brought for her. It shook its mane, and trotted more proudly than Nevalle's stallion as it moved up to the head of the little convoy, and then still further, with its mistress astride its unsaddled back.

"We'll try that next year," Lila muttered to her genial mare; as if to object, the mare twitched its left ear so that it tickled nostrils. After the sneezing fit had subsided, Katriona raised her pale eyebrows.

"Bless you," she said unsmilingly.

"I wasn't brought up around horses."

"I know you weren't. You're from the Mere of Dead Men, aren't you? Like Lieutenant Cormick of the Neverwinter Watch."

Why was Cormick always the first person outsiders thought of when the talk turned to the old harbour towns? One day, she was sure, she'd visit the distant lands and distant planes that she'd seen pictures of long ago in Tarmas's study, and the first thing to come from the mouths of the indigenous inhabitants would be, 'So, you're from West Harbour? Do you know Lieutenant Cormick? He beat Lorne Starling in the Harvest Brawl back in the long summer of sixty-nine.' And he'd done nothing especially noteworthy since, unless one counted getting injured by Garius's thugs. His fame had such remarkable momentum that she was surprised he could walk down the street without being mobbed by admirers. She wasn't jealous. No. Well, perhaps a little.

"I'm from the Mere," said Lila. "We just used to call it the Swamp, though it wasn't – isn't – really. But I'm nothing like Cormick."

"Like Bishop then. Another child of the swamps."

"I don't think I'm a typical product of the vigorous child-rearing customs of the Merdelain. I never fitted in. I never cared to." She fingered the Calim sash that she wore belted around her waist. A memento of a different time, and a different role.

"Elanee's from the Mere too, and Bevil and Orlen and that boy of yours – Kipp – they are as well. Each is very effective, in their way." She snorted in mirthless humour. "Even if Bevil is too soft during the drills. We could do with a few more typical products of the Merdelain – in my opinion, Captain."

"What about you? You said before we left that you know the area we're heading to."

"Somewhat. My family's farm is about ten miles east of the ruins. My father once found a diamond ring in the Illefarn style tangled up in the roots of an old damson tree that a storm tore up. He took the ring straight to the falls above the Illefarn valley, and threw it over. Said the Empire was cursed, and the ring might be too for all we knew. I'd wanted to keep it for myself." She gripped the long orcish fang that she wore round her neck on chain. Then she smiled, and shook her head. "A wise decision. I see that now -"

Lila tried to imagine Katriona as a young girl who wanted nothing more than a diamond ring to adorn her soft hands. It didn't work. "You said that your family farm _is_ ten miles from the ruins. Does that mean the orcs didn't destroy it when their clans were attacking from the mountains?"

Katriona's expression remained unchanged, but there was something like amusement in her voice when she answered. "Of course, it still exists. My younger sisters look after it, along with the farm labourers. It's doing well, I believe. Why would I fight for a place that's already been destroyed? I'm not a lunkhead like the Harbourmen. In the dales we do what we have to, and not more."

"Should all the Harbourmen resign from the conflict then? Most of us have lost our land and families already."

"I don't know that you could ever have called the Mere of Dead Men _land_ ," scoffed Katriona.

"Lost our mudflats and water meadows then. For us – for them, I mean – the window of necessity closed last summer. They lost the war before it really started."

"The buildings are still there. The fields – or what passes for fields – only the people and the livestock were truly claimed by the King of Shadows. And they're quickly enough replaced. As soon as the King of Shadows falls, the survivors will tramp back to live again in their old haunts: the rats boarding the sinking ship," Katriona quipped with near relish. "And everything will continue as it has in the past. Or so I believe."

The ford of the River Dardeel lay ahead. In spate, even with the help of the newly paved causeway, it was a dangerous crossing. But the last months had seen scarcely any rain, and the bubbling, racing flow had been reduced to a trickle, which was collecting below the downstream side of the road in shallow pools.

Sorrel stooped her head to lick at the nearest of them; she snorted in displeasure and trotted on, the water not to her taste.

"You could at least pretend I'm in charge," Lila complained. The mare did not respond, merely continuing to move amiably up the road as it shifted from following the contour of the valley floor to climb up over a line of low hills. "Feeling closer to home?" she asked Katriona.

"With every heartbeat," replied the sergeant.

They rode together without speaking. An old barn stood behind a stone wall that had begun to line a series of rough meadows to the south of the road. It was built of solid limestone blocks; the barn had stood there for ages, probably pre-dating Crossroad Keep by centuries rather than decades. At the time of the defeat of Garius, it had been abandoned, and stayed so, until a collective of Highcliff refugees had taken it over; the sloe and cherry trees in the surrounding orchard were being tended once more, and a row of beehives were planted at the western end. Whether the endeavour would last or not depended on the Keep holding the shadow armies back. And on the price of honey and soft fruits staying buoyant, naturally.

Elanee reappeared at the level of the last sloe, where all signs of cultivation vanished, and spindly ash trees began to lean over the garth wall. "The way is clear ahead," she said, "though it will soon be rougher for the horses." Lila guessed it would be rough for the humans' backsides too. "The paving ends at the summit. From then on we will be riding on gravel."

"What can you see from the summit?"

"Many things," said Elanee solemnly.

"Hills?" suggested Lila. "Trees? Grizzly bears? A tavern with a selection of quality wines and ales, a good cook and a friendly conjurer whose sole hobby is teleporting groups of travellers to the Illefarn ruins and back without sending any of their essential body parts off into planar vortices in the process?"

Elanee stared at her; her lashes fluttered once. "I am sorry, Lila. I believe you are joking. However, I do not understand your sense of humour. I did not give you a detailed answer because I fear such an answer would weary you, and try your patience," she explained without malice. "Of what I noticed that is relevant to the journey, there is little to say, except what I have already: our prospects are good, the weather fair, the route straight and simple. Is this what you meant?"

"Uh...yes. Yes. Thank you, Elanee." She wished a tavern really were nestling in the next valley, though it would have brought her resolution to abstain from alcohol while occupied with Knight Captaining to a rapid close.

And so the first day's journey proceeded without difficulty as Elanee predicted. The druid would rush ahead of the group, sometimes disappearing for troubling lengths of time, before returning to inform Lila that the area was safe, but that the quality of the road was about to get significantly worse – again. They passed peasants, and rusted mercenaries, and were passed in their turn by a messenger wearing the colours of Waterdeep, speeding along at a gallop bound to Who-Knows-Where. For all that the track was pit-holed and superannuated, there was the small mercy of it being dry. When they arrived at the junction of the Great East Road, which was no longer either Great or a Road, with the greenway, where they had planned to camp, the sun was still high in the sky and shining in the way that suns at midsummer ought to shine and rarely did. Lila took a swig from her water-flask, and ruminated. If only all rides were like that! She could have done without the devout ones at the back singing quite so many Tyrran psalms, of course. Even if the one about the mighty rivers that are the power of Tyr, indeed, behold, they entangle the paths of his enemies, and destroy their fords etc. etc. had been satisfying. Perhaps she liked it because it went on and on about water, and she was so fucking thirsty. She had another drink from her flask, and wiped her brow. That was better.

"It's not late. We could press on to the ruins, get what we need, and start back long before sunset," she said to Katriona.

"I can see no reason to camp so early," the sergeant replied. "It's better not to linger out here for longer than we must. There may be no dangers round about, but still, to sit on the floor of a valley with vantage points above us to the north and west -" she gestured to a couple of rocky outcrops and hundred feet or so above them to the north and west, "-goes against all the instincts I formed in the mountains."

Gratified to have received Katriona's support, for she often had the impression that her sergeant's deference hid an extremely jaundiced view of Lila's strategic judgement, she next went to put her suggestion to Elanee. But the druid would have none of it.

"There would be little opportunity for me to scout ahead, and those ruins are a draw for many dangerous beings with fickle loyalties. The spirits and orcs that helped us once may have switched allegiance. To say nothing of the portal that leads straight to the middle of the claimed lands. Riding there unprepared on tired horses would be – unwise. Anything might await us there, or nothing, or the song of a nightingale."

Lila hesitated. Not for long, though. It was the word 'unprepared' that decided her. Being unprepared got you killed very fast these days. It wasn't power, or strength, or genius that let her survive the combat with Lorne Starling in the arena: it was meticulous, obsessive preparedness. You don't go on stage without learning your lines. You don't play cards unless you know exactly where the Aces are. Well, Neeshka didn't. Hopefully the tiefling was enjoying her tenure as boss of Crossroad Keep.

"Make camp!" she shouted, and then felt embarrassed. Her normal voice would have been enough for the gang of twelve. The knighthood was clearly getting to her, as Bishop had wagered it would. "You think it won't make a difference," he'd said. "It will. Especially with someone like you." She wish she'd asked him what he'd meant. Who was someone like her?

"Aye-aye, Cap'n," said Chantler.

"This is not a man-of-war or an Amnish galleon," Katriona pointed out. Was that dry humour or just dry rot in the soul? Still hard to tell.

"As you say, sergeant." He saluted Lila behind Katriona's back and winked. It was clear which option he believed in. "For a start, there's no hammocks, and no sails, and no grog."

"There's hard grey biscuits," said Brackle. "If you like, I can go and find some weevils to put in 'em."

The soldiers whistled and sang and traded banter while they put out the sleeping rolls and got a fire going in a glade that lay in the angle made by the joining of the road to the east with the northern track into the old Illefarn valley. Chantler was whistling 'A Sailor's Life for Me!' with more zest than she'd have thought possible. He drew out the notes at the end of each phrase and made them quiver till they rivalled the song-thrushes and blackbirds.

A belt of elm trees and thick undergrowth gave some protection from any prying eyes that might traverse the highway. Lila would have to sleep with her feet a couple of inches lower than her head, since the glade lay at the base of a rounded hill; she hoped that the last month of feather-beds and thick mattresses hadn't made this kind of life impossible for her.

"Hey, Captain – look here!"

In a patch of ferns not far away, Luan was stooped over something. He sounded interested rather than anxious. Lila reminded herself of that, and took a deep breath to encourage her pulse back to a slower rate.

"What is it Luan?" She walked towards him.

"Some sort of carving..." She crouched next to him, and helped him tear away some of the obstructing ferns. They smelled powerfully of green, and their ridged fronds still felt damp with morning dew.

"I think you're right..." An old piece of limestone rested behind the ferns. On first glance, it appeared to be merely a rock that had been shaped by water and the years into an unusual series of lumps and points. Look longer, and...

"It's a face, isn't it?" said Luan. "There's the nose, and eyes. And it's got something wedged alongside it...it could be a harp..."

"I think it's a shield," said Lila. "But it could just as well be a harp. They're common in the villages near the Keep. A farmer may have put this here to watch over his land."

"Or as a gravestone," said Luan, his shyness forgotten. "Or as a monument to...something. In New Leaf, where my mother comes from, there's a great stone circle in the middle of the common, about two thirds complete. And whenever someone gets married, they put up another stone in celebration."

"What happens when the ends of the circle meet?"

Luan grinned. "I reckon they'll start another one! But there are all kinds of stories – my mother told me that a great serpent would awake in the centre of the circle, and turn all the stones to gold with its venom. My cousins think each stone will become mortal, and they'll pipe and sing all midsummer night long and that the dead will rise up and join in the dance."

"Nice tradition," Lila observed. "In West Harbour, if you got married then you were given a bunch of flowers, and Orlen let you stroke his prize pig for luck."

The young soldier laughed. He had a nice laugh for a seventeen year old with a voice not yet free of its growing pains. "Once for love," he said, striking the squat stone statue on its crown, where a few wavy lines filled with moss gave a suggestion of hair. "Twice for cheer." He struck it again.

Recognizing the doggerel, she joined in on the last line: "...And thrice for another bottle of beer!" He clapped the statue for a third and final time, and they both laughed. What an amusing fellow he was. She hoped she wouldn't ever have to regret knowing him as more than a battlefield statistic.

"Hey, boyo! Have you got the pegs for the canopy in one of those bags of yours?" Draygood called from amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the camp in its foetal stage. Five of the soldiers were hammering in stakes to form a rudimentary palisade under the guidance of Chantler. Sections of light fencing were piled up, ready to be tied behind the stakes to make the palisade complete. Katriona was inspecting the contents of the weapons chest. Her fingers drummed on the side of the cart as she held each armament up to the light. Nothing quite seemed to please her, to judge by the abruptness with which she turned over then let fall each shining dagger, each varnished crossbow. Harfer and Medir, the psalmists, attended to the horses.

There was nothing left for the Knight Captain to do save contemplate matters of great import and deep strategy. So, naturally, she shrugged, took out her knife, and drew the point along the carving's mossy lines and angles. While she worked, she considered the face. Was it a generic piece, the creation of a low-grade workshop that had churned out thousands such, and out of which undifferentiated mass, time had created something rare and precious? Or was it the face of some long dead individual, the likeness of someone once known well to the mason? Now standing clear of the ferns, and free of at least some of the organic accretions of years, in the high cheeks and small, set mouth a certain individuality seemed to be striving to assert itself.

The hooded eyes promised a refuge from the hammer beats and yodelling, yelling calls of the men. As she brushed her hand once more over the limestone surface, a snatch of verse reached her ears that was sung in a husky tenor. She turned and saw Luan, singing to himself as he pulled the canopy taut. When he grew out of the acne, and grew into his growing, he'd be quite a handsome young man. She mouthed along with the words, not remembering where she'd learnt them. They were just something you knew if you lived between the sea and the Sword Mountains.

" _Won't you dig me a grave,_

 _So very wide so very deep,_

 _Put a marble stone o'er my head and feet,_

 _And in the middle carve a snow white dove_

 _Just to let the world know -_

 _That I died for love."_

Across the camp, a horse whinnied, and Lila's hand went to her sabre. But it was only Elanee's pony, carrying the druid back along the path that would take them to Illefarn.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the last bog to have endured the dry spring and summer, and the only bog for miles around, and the wagon was stuck in it. Brockle and Chowley had managed to stop it from sinking while the rest of the group had continued to the ruins. Getting it out had been beyond their considerable combined strength, however.

Lila dismounted and trotted around the wagon, inspecting each wheel to see how far it had sunken into the black, foul-smelling mud. The straps of the haversack dug into her shoulders. Naturally, the Illefarn sculptors had used granite for their statues, having not foreseen the day when the enemies of the King of Shadows would really appreciate something that was light and easily transportable. A small bust carved from soapstone, perhaps. Or even better: a cameo brooch.

The wheels were in deep alright. She had to perch on a mossy ridge to be able to look at the front left corner, which had sunk further down than the rest. With enough leaves and branches to pad the surface and change the blackish, brackish gloop into something more solid, and a space to give the wheels room to move, and a fair bit of lifting, they could have the wagon popping out of its glutinous harbour before Draygood or whoever had salted the porridge.

"What did you think you were doing, lad?" Brockle was demanding of Luan. "It's a wagon, not a warthog. Jump in yourself if you want a mud bath."

She stopped the rest from piling in with criticisms by giving the order to stand back. Then something dark shifted in the young woodland on her left. She squinted, and her eyes latched on to a dark boulder, which unfolded itself into a form that was roughly humanoid, yet much greater in size than any of the races that walked on two legs. In so far as she'd encountered them. It looked – and, as it lurched closer to Lila, smelled – like a part of the boggy ground that had grown limbs and a blind, bullish head. It approached the front of the cart with lumbering steps. Standing between the shafts, it wrapped them each in a rough, unlovely hand. A single jerk of the massive shoulders was all that it took to free the wheels from the mud. Another jerk, and the wagon was back on solid ground.

"What is that thing?" Luan asked from close behind.

"'That thing', I believe, is Elanee," said Lila, noting with amusement that the creature's back was covered with mosses and lichens of all the hues that could be seen in nature. Even as a walking clod of wet clay, Elanee couldn't help having a certain elegance. "Though now shapeshifted into an earth elemental. And a powerful one, too."

A thin line appeared in its face, and turned into a mouth, blasting out fetid swampish air. When it lifted its hands from the wagon's shafts, black prints remained behind on the wood. Unbidden, the thought shot into Lila's mind that this was what the souls of the Harbour-folk must look like. She brushed the idea away, irritated. Now was not the time for such things.

The earth elemental took a couple of steps towards Lila. She looked up at it, resolved to be calm, reminding herself that it was only Elanee behind the dripping façade. Only Elanee? But the druid was not what she had been when they met on the road from the Merdelain. Her reserve made changes hard to grasp, yet Lila was sure that there had been a change, and not just to the potency of her spells.

"My idea with the leaves would have worked just as well," she remarked. "In Red Fallows Watch the people once helped pull a cart full of pig iron out of the mire using just willow branches and grit. The moral kind, I mean. They stole the iron afterwards, of course. And tried to barbecue it as well, most likely. That's all one can expect of folk who take all day to drag a cart onto dry land when there's a perfectly good team of oxen standing by..." she realized that she was reverting to type, and broke off.

"Red Fallows Watch burned down long ago," said Elanee, having morphed from earth to elf in a single blurred instant. Beautiful again, she disturbed her forehead with a frown.

"Yes. It did. Do you approve of that?" Lila asked.

"Why would I approve?"

"When I was last there, there was nothing left but a few stones and turf mounds. Isn't that what you want for the world? To be overgrown and wild? For nature to claim it back?"

"Nature didn't claim it. It was Bishop. He burnt it down."

"Your druid friends told you that?" The Circle. She should have said 'The Circle'. Calling them 'druid friends' made it sound as if Elanee was going through a phase that she'd grow out of in a few decades, before accepting a secretarial position in the Neverwinter Customs House and marrying a clerk. It would be like asking Ammon how he was getting on with his little demonic pals.

"No," said Elanee. "They did not."

"Then you saw it happen?" This was simply agonizing.

"No." That meant either Elanee had been granted the knowledge in a divine vision, or...

"So Bishop told you?"

"Yes."

"You weren't hanging him upside-down over a fire, or anything? He just volunteered the information, all of his own accord?"

"Yes," Elanee gave a faint smile. Was that a light deep within the druid's eyes? And if it was, what did it mean? "You are surprised."

Lila thought of Bishop – the short, the fox-faced, the insolent, the poor son of Merdelain made bad. "Yes," she answered, though Elanee had not asked a question. "Very."

"He spoke to me one day when I was meditating in a glade on the eastern flank of the keep. He was out hunting, but had lost his prey. He started confessing – everything. He set fire to his village while the people were all still asleep in their beds. Did you know that?"

Lila shook her head. Goosebumps ran up her back despite the warmth of the evening sun. "He never said." She could have known if she had wanted to know. For the last two years, she'd had the resources to set discreet agents on the trail of Bishop's past and present. Even without that, there had been enough dark hints from her uncle to form a picture...but she had been careful not to piece them together.

"Watch yourself," said Lila. "He's playing games. He might try to hurt you. Not physically..." Lila had watched how Bishop behaved around women in the Flagon; even the ones that hated him would start to melt when he decided to reel them into him. She herself had always considered herself immune. Though with Bishop living all-expenses-paid at the Phoenix Tail and working for barely one day in five, she wondered if the joke was on her.

"It's not me he wants to hurt," said Elanee.

"Not you? Then – but I've never - "

"No. I'm not -" she paused, and twitched on the horizontal, like a dog with some irritant drops of water trickling down its ears. She briefly pursed her lips. "I'm not thinking of you, but of Casavir. He hates Casavir."

Before Lila could ask any further questions, the druid had walked away, offering no excuse for her abrupt departure. No offence was taken. After their years of tepid co-operation, such a display of rough edges was a welcome change.

Back at camp, the preparations for their second and final night away from the Keep were getting under way. Luan was leading the horses away from the wagon to the clearing where their nosebags awaited them, while Draygood and Chowley checked the palisade A couple of the soldiers – Olly and Ellis – simply lurched straight across to their pallets and collapsed onto them without even removing their armour. No doubt they would recover in time to receive their evening rations. They could have Lila's as well as their own if dinner was going to be porridge with cold porridge biscuits again.

She felt suddenly immensely tired. The innumerable anxieties of her role pressed in on her. If only, as Olly and Ellis had done with their allotted tasks completed, she could lie down and rest.

"Katriona?"

"Captain?" Her sergeant was standing straight-backed and alert by the gap in the palisade that served for a gate during daylight hours. Another haversack, a twin of Lila's, rested high on her back.

"Those hills to the north and west," she said, waving one arm vaguely at the crags that overlooked both the road and their encampment, "I need you to -"

"Harfer and Medir are already stationed there. They will be relieved at sundown by Chantler and Brackle."

"Am I -"

"Yes. You have the watch at dawn with Draygood. Myself, Elanee, Chowley and Luan will take turns in the camp itself."

"Thank you, sergeant." Perhaps she should worry that Katriona was becoming her own personal Sir Nevalle. If the woman became any more efficient, Lila should just delegate saving the world to her along with the Keep and the title.

As she limped over to her bedroll, she noticed Chantler setting up the cauldron for that night's meal. A bundle of long green leaves nuzzling against tiny white flowers lay beside the ladle.

"Plant porridge?" Lila hazarded.

Chantler gave her a dirty look. "I've got half a mind to make some now. That would suit you, wouldn't it? The rest of us are going to have rabbit casserole with parsley and these here ramsons which I found after casting about for half the day for some fresh ones that aren't past their best. But just for you, Cap'n, I'll boil you up a nice bowl of plant porridge."

"My gratitude is limitless," said Lila. "But why don't you save the oats and leaves for Lord Nasher's next visitation? I'm sure His Lordship would feel blessed."

"Is that an order?" Chantler asked. The wrinkles around his cheeks and mouth smoothed, then reformed into laughter lines. He'd do it, too.

"Uh, no. Better not," said Lila, remembering her position. Nasher was the Knight Captain's liege lord. Unless she woke up tomorrow from a strange dream and found herself back in her narrow bed in West Harbour, or else a disgraced exile on a ship to unknown lands, she had to act this part she'd unknowingly auditioned for. "Don't want to spoil him too much. He'd just think we're wasting the Keep's resources on luxuries, and decide to cut the money we get from Neverwinter."

"Any time you change your mind, just say the word," said Chantler, and returned his attention to the dinner preparations.

Her bedroll was under the centre of the awning, while those of the soldiers were spread out around the edges like the spokes of a wheel. That made her resting place the wheel's axle. She let the haversack fall to one side. Gods, it was good to be rid of that weight. What the thin mattress lacked in comfort, it made up for with its scent. She nestled her head on the pillow. Thyme, apples and juniper oil: a breath of the attic storerooms at Crossroad Keep. The one time she had overnighted at Castle Never, the sheets had been damp and stunk of it. How much better they managed affairs here in the south... She yawned, ready to give way to sleep.

Out of habit, she turned on her side to face the border of the camp. Through a gap in the primitive palisade, she could see the trees that climbed the southern slope of the hill watching over the glade.

Something was there. Something ragged and thin. A grey ghost.

Her hand went to her thigh where a knife was strapped. Neeshka's idea. She brushed the hilt with her palm. Focused.

Then chortled at herself. It was a heron - grey and rather small, but the black crest on its head was unmistakeable. This one was turning over the leaf mould with its long beak, perhaps puzzled at the lack of water.

"Off wit ye, ye blitherer," Lila hissed to it. The few old and indigenous Harbour-folk had spoken like that when she was a child. It came back to her at odd times, in lonely fragments. "Water's t'other way, in't it?"

The heron twitched its neck round, and looked at her. It looked for a long while, took a slow and careful step forward. She raised herself on her elbow. Dismissively, the heron shook its head, and stalked away, its destination hidden by the palisade fences.

"Fucking bird," Lila muttered. On instinct, she pulled the haversack closer to her, so that it lay under her breasts against her chest and stomach. Beautiful smells were starting to waft across from the cauldron. Eyepatch and Chowley were laughing, and all she could hear from the camp were the sounds of good order and contentment. Contented herself, she pulled her blanket over her shoulders, and let herself float into a pleasant sleep, dreaming of an ancient barn near Highcliff where she had once spent the night drinking and playing draughts and snap-dragon alongside a dwarf and a tiefling with a name that sounded like a sneeze, and finally passing out on a bed of hay in the apple loft as the night faded away...

A trumpet. Four high, staccato blasts. Then silence. Already, while one hand rubbed the crick in her neck that the thin bedroll had gifted her, with her other hand she was tossing away the blanket and reaching for her sword belt.

"We're under attack!" Katriona shouted not far away. "On your feet, lads. To arms!"

Lila snatched up her sword-belt, and had jumped to her feet and shouldered the haversack long before Katriona's orders came to an end. "Arm and watch the palisade. Form a circle – face outwards."

More trumpet blasts flooded into the camp. Longer and more complex than before. And not from above them – from the sentry on the eastern crag then. The enemy was to the east.

Orange beams were spreading across the sky from the setting sun. The changing of the guard had probably taken place already – which meant that either Chantler or Brackle was up there. She grabbed the nearest soldier, who was still raising himself groggily from his own mattress. As he wiped the sleep from his eyes, she shifted from foot to foot, her impatience for action pricking at her heels.

"Luan. Do you know what those calls mean? They were different to the last ones."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Lila took in his his round, good-natured face, and reminded herself to be kind. "Uh...maybe if they get repeated again. Or you could...hum them...?"

She exhaled through her teeth. "It doesn't matter." It fucking well did matter, but poor Luan didn't have to be told that. She drew her sabre.

"Go and guard Katriona," she said. "I'm going to find out what's happening." He hurried away. Hopefully, he wouldn't think too much about the quality of the order until Katriona had assumed charge of him.

She scanned the camp. Eight soldiers – and Katriona – and Elanee. The men were armed – alert – their shields were up and ready. So far so good. She dodged between Eyepatch and Olly, and hopped over the eastern side of the palisade.

"Captain!" Olly hissed anxiously.

"Going exploring. You two, stay here."

Olly moved his hand to the nearest post, and seemed on the verge of following her anyway. "Stay here," she repeated. "That's an order, not a suggestion. Your job is to help your sergeant hold the camp."

She jogged into the darkness the under the trees. Dangling elder flowers smelling of summer brushed against her cheek. Above her the sky was bonfire red. Though the larch trees on her right, the line of the road appeared and disappeared at intervals. Sabre held ready to slash or stab, she advanced as quickly, as lightly, as she could. Her heart beat fast. In the excitement of the moment, the weight of the haversack became mere ballast, it steadied her, else she felt she might have floated free of the earth. The blood was rushing to her cheeks. Had she felt so alive since they took the Keep from Garius?

The mossy ground was cushioning her steps. Sabre, knife, spells, scrolls, fire-powder. That was all her armoury. And she'd wager that if it came to it, that fucking great head of the Illefarn statue could give a good whack to anything that came her way – provided she could give it the right momentum and angle.

How damp the air smelled down here. She must be near the place where the wagon had been stuck earlier. Pressing her brow, the fingers came away wet. Just like home. The air on warm days that soaked clothes when you were nowhere near water.

She paused, and squinted at the land ahead of her. Where they the red sunlight shone, every blade of grass could be distinctly made out; the long, lush ones with their roots in damp earth, and the shorter ones, where it was better to treat. But each tree cast a deep shadow, and where those fell she could see little at all.

Ahead of her, where the ground began to rise and lead up into the hills, she heard rustling. Then the heavy thud of footsteps. Here the patches of darkness could help her. She merged into the shadows, as Neeshka had taught her. Not good for more than the blink of an eye, yet that could suffice. She waited. Held her breath.

"Chantler!" He stopped, looked around, didn't see her. He was panting. No sign of his easy-going humour now. A trumpet bounced on a string at his back. She stepped into the light. "Chantler, what is it?"

He shook his head. Clutching his side, he leant against the nearest sapling. It bent sharply, unable to take his weight, and sent him staggering in surprise. Lila's laughter shrivelled into nothing as she realized that he still wasn't laughing, indeed, hadn't even noticed his mishap. She grabbed his shoulders to steady him.

"Shadow creatures," he said. "On the Great East Road. Too many to count. Hundreds. Maybe thousands." He trembled, then seized her hand and pulled her back the way she'd come. "Need to get the rest and retreat at the double."

Lila blinked, and mentally shrugged. As long as they brought the Illefarn fragments to the Keep, whether they managed it through a leisurely ride tomorrow or a headlong retreat tonight wouldn't matter.

"Good plan," she said. None other was possible, if Chantler's report was true. He looked exhausted. She reckoned that came more from the shock and fear of discovery than from the effort of hurrying down from his vantage point.

"I've got one of the stones on me," said Lila as they jogged along, she half-supporting him, he half-pulling her forwards. "Katriona has another. Another is -" where was it then? "-in the horse's saddle-bags, I think. We can get ourselves and them away fast enough. Have to lose the wagon though. You can summon Brackle with another of those trumpet calls, if he hasn't reached the camp already."

She stopped talking, and listened fiercely. Nothing. The wrong kind of nothing. No birds. No mice rustling underneath last year's leaf mould. It was the kind of nothing she'd once heard by the Neverwinter docks before rounding a corner to find half-a-dozen of Moire's thugs waiting for her.

"Really? Hundreds of shadows?"

"My eyes weren't lying, Cap'n."

"Fucking hell." She'd fought ten at a go at most. And that was with some serious muscle and spellcraft to back her up. No Khelgar or Qara were here tonight.

"The Sarge will have it all in hand, you mark my words," said Chantler, sounding more like himself.

"I bet she's getting them the men ready to leave as we speak," agreed Lila, thinking this more than possible.

And then she saw Katriona. The woman was not alone. Luan and Eyepatch were at her back. And leading the way... The circumstances made speech unwise until they were standing almost nose to nose.

"Elanee," Lila hissed. "What are you doing out here?" A brassy, minor note prevented an answer. The note fractured into a series of descending triplets.

"That's..." said Chantler.

"...Brackle," Katriona completed. "On the north post. His call means -"

"- danger," said Lila. "It means he's seen the enemy on the road. That's what it means, isn't it?"

Before anyone could confirm her guess, a cacophony of trumpet calls arose ahead of them; one or two from the hill, others from the camp itself. A meaningless raucous tangle of noise. The group listened together in concentrated silence.

"I heard 'Retreat to the North!'" said Chantler.

"I heard 'Help!'" said Eyepatch. "Or it might have been 'Charge!'. Or the one, then the other."

"I think the last call was sounding a retreat to the south," said Luan. "That was from the camp," he added, looking rather pleased. No time to give him a verbal pat on the head and a biscuit now. Just enough time to imagine having the Greycloaks' trumpets beaten out into silver ropes with which she would hog-tie whoever had first introduced them into military practise. And now a breath...and now...

She charged. She was within arrow-shot of the camp. The palisades reared up ahead. The way was clear. She vaulted over the nearest, her skin already hardening, her arms stronger, legs faster through her own enchantments. Her feet smacked against the packed earth. She gritted her teeth, just as her sabre slashed through emptiness.

The camp was abandoned. Wagon, bedrolls, fireplace, all were as they had been. But of the six men who should have waiting, there was no trace. None that she could recognise, anyway. She knew she would be embarrassed about this later. First, she would have to find her missing soldiers.

"They went south," said Elanee, not even bothering to check the grass for boot prints. As she spoke, Eyepatch nonchalantly opened a hole in the palisade fence, and walked through it across to the wagon. He started to pull food from one of the bags, and started transferring the contents to his own haversack.

"Bring water, too," said Elanee. Eyepatch's eye-patch moved in a quizzical sort of way. If he'd had any eyebrow left, he would have raised it.

"Do what she says," said Lila. "She's a druid. She knows this stuff. And throw me a flask of water while you're at it." Catching it one handed, she looped the catch over he belt, and turned to Katriona. "Have you got – you know -"

Katriona narrowed her eyes. "Of course. But why are we hanging around here? We need to find the others."

The others had walked south, directly onto the road that according to Chantler was a thoroughfare for their enemies. What could have possessed them to rush off in that direction? There was no shelter that way for miles, bar a few ditches and thorns. But perhaps her soldier farmers just planned to make for familiar territory...They weren't native to the hills like Katriona. Panicked, they'd head for home, or towards whatever most closely resembled home.

"We should leave," said Elanee. She tilted her head. "I can hear them. They went on foot, and they're surrounded. It's too late. We have to go." Lila's stomach lurched. The druid could be so matter-of-fact.

"Too late?" Lila repeated, stunned.

"I'm not leaving them," Katriona snarled. "If you hadn't run off after the Captain-"

"-she's too important to risk losing-"

"-but she was never at risk. She was fine -"

"-I did not ask you to follow me," Elanee said, unruffled by the sergeant's anger. "Your men were alive and well when I saw them. If they lost their nerve and fled after just a few moments without an officer present, it is their training that is in question."

"Brackle sounded the retreat. They followed their training perfectly!" The sergeant's pale cheeks were blushing with anger, and the scar on her chin stood out more vividly than before, as red as a rose.

"Then -"

"Wait, they left on foot?" Chantler put in. Katriona and Elanee broke off their argument to stare at him.

"What is it?" snapped Katriona.

"They went on foot. That means they didn't take the horses." He spun round to Lila. His eyes were bright. "I'm not leaving them creatures tied up to die. I'll get 'em saddled up if I have the chance, and we can get away all the faster. If not, I'll let 'em loose and bring you back what we came here for."

"There's no time to saddle all the horses. Just get one ready, take the statue head and ride back to the Keep as fast as you can, if you can," said Lila.

"Got it."

"Take care of yourself, Chantler."

"Always do, Cap'n. Always looking out for number one, you know me." He saluted, and jogged away into the woods that lay to the west of the camp where they'd tethered the horses the evening before. Poor Sorrel, Lila thought, guilt stabbing at her. She'd forgotten about her sweet-natured mare.

"Are the rest of you ready?" she asked.

"To go south or north, Captain?" replied Eyepatch.

"First south. Then north. North extremely quickly, I expect."

Eyepatch pulled a morning star from the wagon, and nodded. Katriona smiled.

"This is not good strategy, Lila," said Elanee. "I have learned that much while I have been living in your Keep." Lila knew it was a poor strategic decision. Yet she could not bear the thought of choosing otherwise. Why was that? Was it the reputation she'd have to live with afterwards? Having the Tories of the world remind her for the rest of her life that she was the hero that left her men in the lurch? But then at least there'd be a rest of her life. Even enduring a life-time of the mockery of bar-room generals and armchair knights would be better than having her soul sucked into some shadowy nether realm, or being given a window seat in some celestial Palace of Divine Joy while all the people that mattered most would live and die and progress to other eternities far away from her.

She shot a glance at the four misfortunates that she remained with her.

"Stay close by me, Luan," she said. "Don't let yourself get isolated."

"Yes, Captain."

"But leave enough room for my sword arm. In fact, walk on my left."

"Yes, Captain."

She began moving towards the road. Cautiously, this time.

"Casavir would not approve," said Elanee.

"On the contrary," said Katriona. "If Casavir were here, he'd do the same as our Captain. He didn't give up on his men in Old Owl Well. He valued life. And not just the fuzzy kind on four legs."

Elanee shrugged, then looked at Lila, almost smiling. "Jerro would not approve."

What was that about? Lila's stomach lurched; she pursed her lips, and felt her skin grow hot. For once, she didn't have a proper reply. "We're nearly there," was all she could say.

The long silence from the road had been alarming her. There should have been shouts or cries for help or something, anything, audible much earlier. Now, with a clear view through the trees, she understood the quiet. They were all still alive, thank the gods. On their feet, and sheltering behind their shields; the tips of their long-swords protruded through the gaps in their tiny shield wall. The point of Medir's sword was trembling.

On every side, they were surrounded. A river of shadows was filling the road, of which every part was concealed. No broken paving and shale was visible, but only dark tendrils, claws that flexed and lengthened and contracted, and growing somehow more solid, more real in the light that was turning from orange to rose-red. The road seemed to funnel the channel sunlight as if it was guiding water through a cutting. Lila thought of Ammon again, and his warning: "The King and his forces are most powerful at dawn and dusk..."

One eyeless head turned towards her group. As one, the rest of the hundreds – perhaps thousands – of heads turned. Some of the shadows had the form of animals, others were vaguely humanoid. One shadow near them resembled a tall human archer. Featureless, of course. A dark outline that floated apart every few heartbeats, and then rebuilt itself in the same image. Hadn't Callum reported that a party of archers had vanished on this road last autumn?

The shadows began to flow towards them, ignoring the little island of men huddled in their midst. Their route to the south was open behind them. She didn't have long to make her decision. It was a simple one, anyway. They were good soldiers, strong and well-trained. But against such numbers, all they could do would be to die uselessly.

"Go!" she shouted, as she whipped her sabre through her first opponent, a shrunken, old, indefinable _thing_ , a being of black dust.A weak blow. She was putting all the force she had into her voice. "Go! That's an order! Draygood, take the others and get away – we'll meet at the rendez-vous!" She struck again. "Go!" she shouted once more, her voice cracking.

They'd heard her. Draygood saluted, and started leading the others to the southern edge of the road. Watching their progress was impossible. She had to fight.

A stinging pain bored into her left shoulder. That archer. She dodged behind Eyepatch and Luan, who had their shields raised. No arrow shaft had transfixed her; whatever the creature was firing, it wasn't two feet of sanded poplar. There wasn't even a hole in her jerkin. Her shoulder hurt nonetheless.

"All that food not weighing you down too much?" she asked Eyepatch.

"No, chief," he answered. Luan laughed rather shrilly.

"Good," she said. She stuck her right hand out from behind the shelter of the shields. From the ring on her forefinger, fire blossomed, formed a vast globe. For a moment the heat was unbearable. Then the fireball hurtled away from them across the road and burst into flames at the feat of the shadow archer. The creature shuddered, shook in the midst of the fire, seemed to crack into pieces – but as the flames died, he straightened and, drawing his diverse elements back to him, he resumed firing his translucent missiles.

Katriona was cutting through all that came near her as if slicing butter, but she wouldn't be able to keep it up. There was sweat on her brow already, with seven enemies down and hundreds more pressing towards her. She would be surrounded, drained and overwhelmed. They all would be.

Lila jumped forwards to attack a shadow that was coming at Luan. She ripped her blade twice through it, shoulder to waist and back. That creature didn't reform. As another arrow flew near her elbow, she moved back behind Luan.

Again, she scanned the road. All that she saw confirmed her instinct – they had to go, and fast. Elanee's summoned elementals were being smothered under the writhing darkness. Her soldier boy was casting desperate glances at Lila, as if he expected her to turn into the Hero of Neverwinter at any moment and wipe the shadows from the land with a raised eyebrow. It was probably easier for real heroes of legend; the ones with light in their eyes and courage stamped in their innermost selves. "Fate be thine, fair fortune mine," she muttered to herself, remembering an old saga. It didn't work like that here, if it did anywhere. They would have to run. Now.

Something new tugged at the edge of her field of vision. She cut down another shadow, then snapped her head round to the west. A horse was braying and bucking at the roadside. Unsaddled. Riderless. A bad omen.

If the shadows started swarming around them and closed off their line of retreat, they'd be in serious trouble.

"Luan, hold your ground for a little longer. Will you do that?"

"Yes, Knight Captain!"

"When I say 'run!' you'll run north towards Brackle's watch post. Right?"

"Right."

"What will you do?"

"Run north."

"Good. This won't take long!" She slashed viciously at the shadows that stalked nearest to Luan, and threw a handful of fire-powder at them. No pause to watch the results. The crackling at her back was satisfaction enough.

Elanee stood sheltered in the protective lea of her elementals. She looked tense. Almost frightened.

"We can't do this, Lila. There are too many. You need an army for this..."

"I know. But we just need a short head start. They're strongest at dusk and dawn. Once the sun sets, they're weaker, and we can outpace them easily. Even on foot. We just need -"

"-a distraction. A hindrance." Elanee closed her eyes. Lila waited impatiently. When she opened them again, she seemed more confident. "Yes, there is something I can do. A powerful spell. Guard me."

Lila nodded, and Elanee closed her eyes again. Fine silver threads began to creep over the druid's olive skin, until it seemed almost totally covered by icy cobwebs. Her hands shook. Instantly, the elementals disappeared. Cursing, Lila sprang forwards to take their place. Shadows surged around her. Some of their wavering talons tried to claw at the ties of the haversack. She sliced through the reaching, thrusting limbs.

More came at her. She cut them to shreds too. And then another wave...

Shandra had once claimed that she'd heard the shadows whispering to her as she hid from them in a tomb in Blacklake. An unlikely story, it had seemed then. Lila had thought the shadows about as sentient as moss or lichen, and capable of speech as the creepers that choked willow trees to death in the merelands. And now...from everywhere and from nowhere, and from the horizon, and from the ground under her feet, she could hear one unified voice. A quiet mantra, caressing her name in a hundred different tongues and tones, clipped, drawling, hoarse, smooth: Lila. Hreri. Alia. Krinē. Lilia. Bĕi hĕ. Lirio. Liliya.

Lily.

Her right hand was shaking with cold. It was too early in the fight to have a block of ice for a sword-arm. If only she could make her body understand that...

"Fortune is mine," she told herself. She drew her knife with her left hand, and lunged about her. _Listen. Listen to us..._ the shadow chorus was murmuring.

More braying. Another horse had broken onto the road through the tree-line. This horse had a rider. A bag at his side must contain the third of the statue heads, the last that they had found intact.

Staying alive was consuming all her focus. Awareness of her position, of her sword, of her enemies. It was impossible to do more than snatch a look to the west. But without looking, without needing to look, she knew it had to be Chantler on the horse, and that he'd be surrounded. Curse him. Why did he go running off on his own? And why had she let him? Separating never did anyone any good.

"Captain – it's Chantler!" shouted Katriona. Lila didn't reply at first. Chantler was clinging to the neck of his terrified horse; underneath him, it kicked and reared and writhed. There was a flood of shadows between Lila and the man who was about to die. "He needs help. He's stuck out there. I'll try and get to him!"

"Stay where you are!" Lila yelled back. "Katriona, that's an order. Chantler – Chantler!" She prayed for him to hear her. "Throw the fucking thing away – they want it – not you!"

He was so far down the road that he couldn't have understood. He simply raised his head numbly from the horse's milk-white neck, and stared at them. He made no move to release the bag. With the horse rearing up on its hind-legs, perhaps he couldn't. The shadows were crawling up the horse's flanks like rising smoke.

His face was so white...

Lila shuddered. She threw the last of her firepowder at the shadows that were pressing in on her. "Shut up!" she spat at them as they darted back. This was the point were the Hero of Neverwinter would do something amazing...

She hacked at an orc-like shade as it crept towards Katriona. Her sergeant's blue eyes were fixed on the solitary old soldier.

"I'm going -" Katriona began.

"Wait!" said Lila. The cold was seeping into her larynx; her shout had become a whisper. She tried again. "Wait! If you leave, we all die."

Katriona's lips were set defiantly. She was too strong for Lila to physically restrain. The iron torque around the woman's wrist wasn't worn for the sake of prettiness. Its enchantments enabled their wearer to punch a hole in a wall.

As Katriona took her first step westwards, Chantler pushed himself upright on the horse's back. He shook his head, just once, but that one time was clear enough. Then his hands let go their grip on the horse's mane, and he slipped down into the arms of his enemies without uttering a word.

Suddenly finding itself riderless, the horse snorted in panic, and drove its unevenly kicking legs into a wild canter, and soon the shadows had pooled across the space where Chantler had been.

Lila turned away. She was in time to see the first bolts of light racing along Elanee's bare forearms into fists that were swollen with it. From them, the light burst across the road in a blitz of thin rays, each interlocking with the others till they looked like the geometric meanders that lay thickly over the surfaces of Illefarn craft works. They shone so brightly that Lila couldn't even face them with her arm across her eyes.

"Get ready," said Elanee's soft voice nearby.

"To run?"

"To catch me." With her back to the fireworks, Lila shuffled cautiously towards the druid. The few shadows that were not trapped on the other side of the magical defences were drifting, stunned. Elanee's olive skin was fading into a silver-grey sheen, as if the price of her spell had been paid from her flesh and blood. She didn't look alive. But then first one, then another almond eye opened to regard her work with their usual calm. Her mouth opened to let out a sigh. And all at once, her legs gave way, and she slipped to the ground as silently and with as little protest as Chantler had done.

Lila reached her in time to save the druid's skull from receiving an unhealthy knock. After catching her, Elanee's shoulders and back lay against her arms, while the druid's head rested on her own shoulder. For a thin, light-boned elf, she felt surprisingly solid. Cumbersome. Not made of nightingale song and starlight after all, as a drunk in The Sunken Flagon had once opined before sobbing his heart out into a dishcloth.

She took stock. The conjured barriers were holding back the shadows – but not, unfortunately, destroying them. She couldn't count on the barriers lasting. Katriona, Eyepatch and Luan were all still on their feet, praise be whatever deity wanted the credit for it. Luan was swaying; he was leaning against the brow of his shield to stay upright.

"Katriona – I need you to lift Elanee. I can't move her on my own."

Although trembling and pale, although weighed down already by the second of the stone heads, Katriona put an arm under Elanee's back and another under her knees, and lifted her into the air without any sign of strain, except for the blue glow that radiated briefly from the torque around her wrist.

"What about Chantler?"

"He's beyond the barriers." She shot a look at the soldiers, and lowered her voice. "If he's still alive, we can't save him. We can die with him, maybe."

Katriona didn't respond. Behind the sergeant's back, Lila saw the barriers begin to flicker. The shadows lay patiently along the road and the banks, waiting.

She ran to Luan and Eyepatch. "Drop your shields. Take Luan's right arm. Luan, you give me your left. _Now._ As fast as you can."

The boy did as commanded, but woozily, as if not fully conscious of his actions. She started to jog. Eyepatch, on Luan's opposite side, kept pace, while the boy did his best to match their tempo. Every so often he would look back through the trees to the road, to the place where Chantler most probably lay, and when that happened he would stumble. Then they would simply lift him up between them, half-carrying him until he returned to putting one foot in front of the other. Katriona soon caught up with them, in spite of her double burden.

"Glad you're here," said Lila, as Katriona drew level.

"I have a duty," Katriona replied.

Silence fell. The gradient was becoming steeper. The air was beginning to catch and scratch in her lungs with this new trial coming on top of the fight with the shadows. It was a welcome kind of pain though for with every step, she could believe herself further away from the terrible army that lined the valley floor. And it drew the mind away from Chantler, from the rest of the men who were fleeing across open ground.

She tried to pay attention to what might lie ahead, and to listen for sounds that would betray the enemy creeping up behind. Her bag of tricks was at Crossroad Keep; most of what she'd brought on this mission was still in the wagon. Without her usual array of spells and potions, there was little she could effectively achieve. The only thing was to keep going, and pray she wasn't leading the survivors directly into another ambush.

What else had Ammon said? "Walk on the northern sides of hills"? Well, that's what they were doing at the moment. And "stay away from the edges of forests." With a sense of foreboding, she squinted ahead to where the trees thinned. forest becoming scrub, then the kind of short grass that sprouts on upland soils. Nosing from the hillside was a great crag, jutting out like the prow of those slender trading caravels that moored a few feet from her uncle's tavern. That crag was where Brackle had been stationed, and where he must have sounded the alarm.

"Katriona – stop -" Lila said. She leant against a tree and took a few deep breaths.

"We need to press on," said the sergeant.

"No," Lila stated, feeling some firmness returning to her, as the rapid beat of her heart pulsed through her chilled hands and throat. "No – it could be a trap. I'm going to go ahead. Only follow me when I signal that it's safe."

"But we left all the trumpets behind in the wagon," said Luan, his confusion intense. Eyepatch was gently lowering him to the floor to give them both a rest.

"Uh – it's okay, Luan. I'll just whistle. No military band will be necessary." She handed her water flask to Eyepatch; if only someone would call him by his name – then she'd find out what it was and pretend she'd always known. "Make sure he drinks some water. You too."

Bending low, she continued up the slope. No birds, no mice or insects. No shadows either. As she left the shelter of the trees she paused. Held her breath. Scanned the sky above, wheeled around to look back down the hill to where her four companions were waiting, both resting and poised to run.

All seemed clear.

She dropped to all fours as the undergrowth turned to grass. There was just enough light coming from the sun sinking over the Sea of Swords to define the terrain ahead of her. Springy turf, interspersed with sandy ledges that provided good footholds. Here and there a patch of clover and buttercups. The mouth of a rabbit warren with the droppings of its residents forming neat piles on the turf outside. No rabbits though. Not even a glimpse of kicking hind-legs vanishing under a bracken bush.

The base of the crag was level with her now, and the ground became much steeper as she started to haul herself up the grass that ran beside the bare cliff face. It seemed a far higher and more formidable outcrop at close quarters than when she had looked up at it from the camp that afternoon.

The straps of her haversack were biting into her shoulders. Not far now, though. And after the crag, the rest of the way to the summit would be a stroll in comparison. Once there, with no more enemies sighted, she'd feel more secure.

Her foot slipped. Quickly, she drove her knees and fingertips into the earth, feeling the web of grass roots below the surface break under the pressure of her nails. "Fucking hell," she muttered, and looked up.

Something big and white was lurking at the top of the slope. Lila's feet scrabbled for purchase in the shallow soil. She couldn't fight while spread-eagled on a near-vertical field. Her right foot found a hold. Then her left. That gave her enough stability to draw her knife.

The white shadow trotted downwards. A vast, raucous bleat came from its heavy jaws. It was a sheep.

Lila bit her lip, forcing down the relief that made her want to laugh till she cried. A higher bleating came from another part of the hill, perhaps from a lamb. More and more sheep joined the chorus, each one adding its own individual voice to the medley.

So much for discretion. Anything waiting on the crag would have a pretty good idea she was coming after this racket.

"Thanks a lot, milady," she commented as she passed the sheep. It gave a dour look. This animal wasn't skittish like the ones at the Keep. She was in the Dales, alright.

A final scramble, and she was on top of the crag. Save for a few small rocks, and yet more droppings, it was empty. Nothing could have been a more welcome sight. Lila raised her hands in a generic prayer of thanks to no particular deity. Deep down, what she had been expecting was another army of shadows, and the corpse of Brackle.

Still crouching low, she shuffled to the crag's end. If it had been daylight, she might just have been able to see the Neverwinter flag whipping against the pole that surmounted the highest turret of the highest tower of Crossroad Keep. Strain as she might, however, all she could perceive to the south-west was a charcoal grey sky lowering over rolling fields, unenlivened by the lamps of villages or farms. The sheep on the hill-top were the closest thing belong to civilization that she could see.

As a precaution, she scanned the land above and below her once more. The summit of the hill was unforested. A poor place to shelter, but a poor one to set an ambush as well. Sure that it was reasonably safe to do so, she cupped her hands around her mouth and whistled. Once, twice, three times. Then she lay flat on the crag to wait. Soon, the four others emerged from the woodland. Luan was walking unaided. Elanee still lay unconscious in Katriona's arms.

If only she had ignored Elanee yesterday. What had seemed like caution now appeared to be the worst sort of recklessness – to spend a second night in the open without need, and near the Illefarn ruins to boot!...They would all be home and safe by now if Lila had simply trusted to her initial instincts. She had let a foolish doubt destroy her better judgement, and for that doubt, Chantler would never be home again.

A wail tried to form somewhere deep inside. She ignored it. She never cried on the job. Instead, she rubbed her temples with fingers that smelled of the earth. Bits of soil were wedged under fingernails. Idly, she picked at them. Bishop cleaned his with the tip of his knife. That was probably why the tip of his little finger was missing.

Rolling on her back, she gazed upwards. A welcome breeze cooled her face, drying the sweat of the fight and the climb. Night was approaching. The first stars were shining clearly in the northern sky. If there were any lovers remaining in Neverwinter, they'd be coming together now, though the stars, outshone by a thousand street lamps, were not as bright there. The night watch were treading the walls of the Keep. In the Sunken Flagon, the last seats would be occupied. Even the horrible three-legged stool that no one used during the day would be a prize for a regular in the packed-out pub. And here was Lila Farlong, lying exhausted on a lonely hill with innumerable enemies not an arrow-shot away. Better to have paid the best healer in the land all her money to conjure the splinter out of whatever recess it had lodged in, and go her own way free of the demands of Lord Nasher.

The air up here smelled beautiful. Sharp, cool, and filled with the aroma of night. Why was it that night always smelled different to daytime? Addictive. If only it was in the orchard of the Keep that she was enjoying it, and not here...

Nearby, someone stumbled. A muffled yelp, and a not very muffled curse succeeded the first sound. Lila briefly let her eyelids close. Opening them again on a dark world, she pushed herself up from the crag. It was time to be the Knight Captain again. Still bent double, she went to help her people stagger up the last few yards.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Luan was sitting hunched-up, his knees under his chin. His back was to the rest of the group. He might be keeping watch for them unasked, or looking for his missing comrades. Or else he might be in shock. Lila remembered how she had felt after the first githyanki attack.

Returning her gaze to Elanee, she wondered whether to risk a little mage light to discover if the russet had come back to her long hair. With the road still less than a mile away, she decided against it, for being too liable to announce their location to their enemies. But once they were on the far side of the hill...perhaps just a glimmer...

"How is she?" Eyepatch asked in a whisper.

"Out like a light. Breathing well, though. She'll be fine," said Lila, surprised at how confident she felt as she said it. "She just overdid it a bit, and her body's resting. I've seen it happen a couple of times before with Qara..." Qara wasn't a druid, hadn't changed colour, or become cold to the touch, but never mind about that. If Elanee lived, she could explain what had happened. If she died, then it was a loss that Lila wouldn't find difficult to bear, for all the long history of their shared travels and travails.

"What's the plan, Captain?" The sardonic edge to Eyepatch's voice that had reminded her of Bishop was gone; vanished, along with Chantler.

"North over the hill. Then west for at least ten miles. If the coast is assuredly clear, we can try dropping back onto the road. Otherwise we keep going west through the hills till we're back in the territory of the Keep."

"Sounds good to me," said Eyepatch.

"What do you think?" Lila asked of Katriona. "You did say you were native to these dales."

The blonde had been wrapping Elanee's slight body in a summer cloak. Now, hesitatingly, she began to speak. "...Let me think...yes, that should work. We can either wade across the rivers – they looked shallow enough yesterday – or take an old track I know. It had some old pack horse bridges. Partly tumbled down, but usable."

"Don't fancy wading across a river in the dark. Is your track easy to get to?"

Katriona considered, then nodded. "We could pick it up just by walking north, as you said, Captain."

Given that their group was barely large enough to qualify for its own table at The Phoenix Tail, the insistence on sticking to military etiquette in front of the lower orders - all two of them – seemed faintly bizarre. Yet, since Katriona had just helped to fight off and army of shadows before carrying their unconscious saviour up a near-vertical slope, she had really earned the right to call Lila whatever she wanted.

"Are you read-"

Katriona was already hoisting Elanee back up into her arms.

"Okay, clearly you are. But if you get tired, tell me and I'll take over. My gloves my not be in the same league as that ring of yours, but they're enough for one elf, I think."

"Yes, Captain."

Luan had still not moved. She didn't dare call over to him. Instead, she crept across to where he huddled, and bent down. "Time to go," she whispered. "How are your legs?"

"Like butter. That's better than before. Before I couldn't feel them at all."

"Ah, that's not too bad then. Just don't try and eat them with bread and pickles."

"No, Captain. With Chantler – not here – they're definitely safe." It was too dark to see his expression. That came as a relief. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"He could still be alive, couldn't he? I never saw his body."

Lila hesitated, torn between the kindness of truth and the kindness of hope. That must be how Retta Starling had felt when a swamp child tugged at her skirts and asked how much coin would be needed to bring someone back from the dead.

Last year, she would probably have lied.

"I don't think so, Luan. And if you do ever see something that claims to be him – then don't trust it. Despise it. Shadows like to take the form of the people they've murdered."

"I left him there..."

"We had to leave him."

"If I'd gone with him to the horses..."

"...then you'd have died there too."

He turned his head fully towards her. "Why did you let him go?" His voice moved from a whisper to a volume that made her nervous. "You told him it was a good idea!"

"It seemed so, at the time. I thought the shadows were only to our east, not looped around us."

"But -"

"Be quiet, soldier!" Katriona hissed. Luan became quiet. "And stand up!" He stood up.

In mute accordance, they began walking. There was just enough light to see where they were putting their feet. However much the straps of the haversack threatened to pull her down the slope, however much they chafed her shoulders, it was good to be on the move again. The further they got from the site of the ambush, the happier she would be.

As they reached he summit, the short grass came to an abrupt halt; they were into the heather. The hill's broad top was covered in it. Here and there patches of gorse and bracken broke through the wire and blossom spread. The summit was not as distinct as she had expected. In fact, it proved to be rather long and almost flat, like the upturned hull of a river barge. Ahead of them, the moon shone through the diamond gaps in a limestone wall.

The wall blocked their path. There might be a gate... she looked in vain for one. From her position and in the summer night, it was impossible to locate.

Clambering over the wall dislodged a few chunks of rock; most was mortared together with moss, and earthen matter. Her boots scrambling, trying for footholds, she scraped off a layer of grime from the surface, but the structure itself held firm. She landed on the other side. As her legs still tingled with the impact, a curve-beaked bird flew up from its nest in the gorse, scooting around the sky, whooping in indignation.

Eyepatch, already perched on the wall to help Katriona pass Elanee to Lila, nearly dropped the elf directly into the heather. Before the attractive force of Toril could deliver her to a hard landing, Lila caught her head and arms.

"What was that bird?" Luan asked. Eyepatch spread his hands wide in a gesture of nescience. Mentally, Lila imitated him. Had it been a dunlin? A lark? A cousin of those cranes that had stalked through the waters of the mere in ever decreasing numbers? The pools were empty now.

A quiet voice rose from between her arms. What it said was too soft to be intelligible. The shoulders resting against her elbows twisted and turned.

"Elanee! Welcome back!" said Lila. Grabbing the edge of the wall, the druid pulled herself up a little, so that she was neither prone nor sitting upright.

She spoke again, more audibly. "A curlew. The bird is a curlew. And – please give me some water."

Lila handed Elanee her flask, from which she drank unaided. A good sign. "What happened to you?"

Putting the flask to one side with a hand that trembled from the effort, Elanee sighed. "A special prayer. To place all the power my god grants me...into a single spell." She let herself sink back into the heather. "Foolish," she said.

"Brave," countered Lila. "It saved us."

"For a little longer," said the druid, allowing Katriona to scoop her up again without seeming to notice, "for a little longer, maybe." Her head tilted against Katriona's shoulder.

"Has she blacked out again?" Lila asked.

"I am _resting_ ," came Elanee's muffled reply.

Once they had left the wall far behind them, and the hill was turning into the slope of a shallow valley, a sound began that resembled both the purring of a cat and the snorting of a piglet.

"She's asleep," said Katriona.

"As I hear," said Lila.

Eyepatch guffawed. "I didn't know elves could make that kind of noise."

"Well, we've all learned something new tonight, then," she said. A current of laughter sang in her blood, and swiftly faded, and she remembered that she was sick at heart, and in danger. She watched Luan's silhouette recede, becoming smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter, as he let the slope set his pace for him. He was moving at a speed beyond what common sense would suggest was wise for the descending of hills without a lantern at night.

She considered calling him back. "Are there any cliffs hereabouts, d'you recall?" she asked Katriona.

"The steepest one is that crag we climbed. There's nothing else for a good five miles in any direction." She seemed to realize why Lila had asked. "He'll be fine."

They continued the descent. Katriona's track was supposed to lie just a few feet above the valley floor. Although the sun had finally finished its setting, the full moon cast a light over the landscape sufficiently bright to illuminate its shape. It felt as if they were walking through a long, still twilight. Lower down, grasses and ferns began eating into the heather, but trees did not grow on this side of the hill, except in a few isolated clumps, pruned into jagged diagonals by the prevailing wind.

Luan had almost made it to the bottom when he toppled sideways, and rolled the remainder of the distance. Concern melted into amusement, as Lila saw him spring back to his feet, and shake himself to get rid of the stalks and leaves that had adhered to his clothes. He stalked back up the hill to collect his shield. Clearly, his legs were feeling better. There was a lot to be said for letting people learn from their mistakes.

"Well done, Luan. You've found the path first," Katriona observed, after they'd caught up with him.

"And in a rare old style," said Eyepatch. Lila reminded herself to stay aloof. Instead of joining in, she squinted at what must be the track that Katriona had promised. It was about ten feet wide, and ran as straight as an engineer's measuring rod from the east to the west. She had expected the track to be covered in packed earth or grass. But it was almost the reverse, for on either side there were growing lush grasses. On the track itself, however, heather bushes were sprouting, lying low and thick on the ground, filling the space entirely as if the plants had been deliberately set there.

"Step away from it, Lila." Elanee was awake again. And on her feet, albeit leaning heavily against Katriona. Her hair, shining in the moonlight, displayed a reddish tint once more.

"Why? It looks like just what we need. We can follow this straight to the Neverwinteroad." But she obeyed the druid anyway, moving back, recognizing that the tone of the instruction had been anything but light.

"It's not a track. I can feel it. It belongs to them. It belongs to _him._ "

"I've walked this way more than once," said Katriona, stung. "Farmers use it all the time to herd their sheep to market."

"They aren't here now," said Elanee. "And this – this thing – was not built with farmers in mind. It feels as the claimed lands feel. Afflicted. Lost. Don't set foot on it, Lila."

Nodding, she trod the edge of the broad line of heather, careful not to trespass beyond the grass. She pressed her fingers to her breast, as near where the splinter lay as she could manage. There was nothing. She felt nothing. She very rarely did.

It was very slowly that she became aware of their companion. On the opposite side of the heather, a ragged heron was standing in frozen expectation, as if waiting to spy a fish darting through the prickly twigs and briers that lay below its beak. The bird was indifferent to its new audience of four clumping humans and a sickly elf.

As Lila shifted uneasily, the toe of her boot struck something solid. She bent down. After knocking back a few stray ears of barley, she found herself staring at a heavy metal ring. It was quite blackened, and fixed at one end to the surface of a broad piece of limestone. Not a lump, but a shaped mason's block. For all that it was half-obscured by obstinately waving grasses, and at midnight, she could recognise that.

"We're going," said Lila, not looking again at the heron or the metal ring. A mooring ring, she realized. Like the ones that lined the banks of the Never and seafront near her uncle's tavern. It was insane, but that ring had been used to moor boats. Elanee's instincts were right, this time.

The others followed her without complaint. Turning south-west now, Lila tried to get as far from the ring as possible, while keeping to a course that would ultimately bring them nearer to the Keep, the crossroads, and the army. Fear of the shadows on the road warred with anxiety about the unmoving line of heather to her right.

Over her shoulder, she could see her four companions trudging in her footsteps. Elanee's legs were working, though she walked sandwiched between Katriona and Luan. So far she was keeping up the pace her escort set.

"What did you see back there, Captain?" Eyepatch asked. His good eye shot a glance at her that flashed in the moonlight. "You sounded spooked."

"I was a bit surprised," she lied. Her heartbeat was still faster than it should be. "I almost fell over this big metal ring. And I suddenly remembered speaking to a scholar-" to Ammon, in fact, and it had been last month, in the war room near the fire after everyone else had gone to bed "-and this man said that the Illefarn Empire was famous for its engineering works. Harbours, light houses, tunnels – and where the rivers weren't deep enough for cargo, they created canals. Huge ones that went on for more than a hundred miles, sometimes."

"And that track through the heather – that was one of 'em?"

"Yes. It must have been. But it can't have been, you see, because it should be well under the earth. Not sitting there like a daisy as if the mason and his team had set it there a decade or two ago."

"Coulda been the work of storms..." Eyepatch suggested without conviction. "They can strip the soil right off the land and down to the bedrock."

"It must have been a very localized storm. Unless Talos was honing his hand-eye coordination..." She kissed her fingers and pressed them to her forehead in appeasement. A slighted violent deity was something she could do without at present.

Katriona broke into the exchange. "It's the first I've heard of such things. I never saw any masonry or old metal rings when I was walking that way."

The moon was full, and shone across the hills. Between the sky and the heather, along the edge of the horizon, the deep blue of the night had taken on a purplish hue. At the limits of hearing, Lila, straining, thought she detected the heavy, regular beat of wings. "No – I'm not sure that this is quite the same land that you crossed."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean – I'm not sure what I mean. It doesn't matter. Whatever's happening, we can't linger."

"You are right," said Elanee, as she leant on Luan's arm. "I do not like it here. The atmosphere was – clearer – on the hill-top."

"We can't go back south over the hills already," Katriona snapped. "We'd be walking straight into out enemies waiting arms – or wisps or tentacles or whatever it is the cursed things have. At least the orcs could bleed."

"That is not what I wished to suggest," said Elanee. "I would only say that -" she closed her eyes, looking suddenly exhausted "-that with a real choice between high ground and low ground, we should ascend."

"Noted," said Lila, taking control to diffuse the impending quarrel, "Now let's go."

They kept to the same contour for several miles, until with the night deepening around them, and a chill colouring the air, they were obliged to descend through birch and willow towards the sound of running water. When she saw how wide and fast-flowing the river that lay ahead of them was, she felt ready to sink to her knees in despair.

Katriona didn't even pause. With the aid of a long branch that she'd broken from the side of a young tree, she clambered down to the water. Seeing that it came no higher than Katriona's ankles, Lila took heart and followed her sergeant's footsteps.

"We're safe from the shadows here," she remarked to Luan, as they waited for Elanee to pull off her moccasins on the bank. "They don't go into running water."

"Not if the water is pure. This is not, I fear" said Elanee. "This river is called the Selverwater by the human farmers. It has its spring in the Sword Mountains, but no mouth, save for its tributaries that water the Merdelain."

Lila looked to her left, watching the river in its southern progress. Keep going downstream, and before long you'd be passing under the Great East Road. Further, and you'd be in the marches of the Mere of Dead Men. Innocently, gently, as if to say that it knew nothing of the shadows and stagnant pools that awaited it, the river sparkled and trickled over its beach of cloud grey pebbles.

"I've never seen a river shine like this one does. It's like the stars are caught in the water," said Luan. He put his hands into a rush of foam and drew them out wonderingly. "Selverwater – silver water, right?"

"There aren't any silver mines round here," said Lila; she'd briefly toyed with the idea of buying shares in a mining company before the Keep had been dropped on her, and everything had changed.

"The river bed is full of quartz, flint and chalk," said Elanee. "And most of the Selverwater is broad and shallow. Light reflects on the rocks and creates a shimmering effect." She slid down the bank feet first, not even rustling the ferns that grew there, but her innate grace let her down at the end, for she staggered as she landed. Luan came to her aid. Without seeming to notice, Elanee continued, "This is the first time I have seen the reason for the Selverwater's name with my own eyes. Her children in the Merdelain are channelled through clay and peat. The day I found a piece of flint washed up on the side of a stream was the day I decided to follow you to Neverwinter, Lila. The only flint I ever found in the heart of the merelands. Fire in a damp country."

The druid could sometimes surprise her. Lila smiled at her, before returning her mind to their situation. Katriona was halfway across already, but had slowed her pace. She was testing each step with her branch. The water was still not up to her calves; an expanse of calm to her left hinted that not everything was finger-deep.

Eyepatch had crossed further upstream, and was on the western bank, waiting. His speed had been paid for by. His breeches and tunic appeared soaking wet. At another time, that would have provided her with much entertainment. At another time – if things were different – she'd have thrown herself into the deepest pool she could find, and danced in the icy water from the mountains.

Instead, she kept one eye on Elanee, who was walking more slowly than was her wont, and her other eye on the river bed just ahead of her. She wished she'd had another eye to spare for Luan, as he walked in front of Elanee, but stopped and turned back to check on her so frequently that she was in danger of falling over him.

Quickly they advanced to the midpoint. The pebbles were free of algae, free of weed, and offered no treacherous footing. Lila glanced to her left, where a pool had been eaten out of the river bed by the eddies that swirled round a boulder. Near the surface, a shoal of young fish darted to and fro with the practised conformity of a volley of arrows. Below that...

Below that was a face. Huge. Composed of angles and broad planes. The hollow eyes gazed mournfully up at her.

A cloud scudded over the moon, and when it had passed, and twilight was restored, she had lost sight of the face in the pool. She crouched, shaking off one gauntlet and using her bare hand to lend her additional balance; the water really was freezing. She leaned forward, squinting into the pool. Looked into every cranny and drip. The face wasn't there. Nor was there the material from which an overwrought mind could have built the illusion of a face.

"What is it?" Elanee was at her side. Lila pushed herself upright, and took an unplanned step back. Water flooded over the top of her right boot. She shuddered, and shook her hand, trying to restore feeling to the numb fingers.

"I thought I saw a face. The face of a statue that Luan and I saw earlier by the camp. It was in that pool, but it's gone now."

Elanee's eyes followed Lila as she pointed at the pool's base. She shook her head.

"I see noth-"

A fish mouthed the surface. Ripples circled outward over the still water. And in that instant, lasting for not longer than it took the outermost ring to vanish into the foam on either side of the pool, the stone face was there again. Lila saw it, and when Elanee trembled, she knew the druid had seen it too.

They exchanged looks. "Do you know what it is?" Lila asked.

"I am – not sure."

"But you have an idea?"

"The beginning of one. Not more than that. I think you do too. Lila, the others are waiting. A discussion cannot help us at this point. The one helpful act now, is movement."

The pool was empty again. Empty of all but mountain water, fish and pebbles. Lila readjusted the straps of her haversack wearily. Her ankled twinged. "You're right," she said.

"What were you doing out there?" Katriona inquired of Lila as they pulled themselves up the western bank.

"Observing the fish," Elanee answered, while Lila shook water from her boot.

"Observing fish!" was all the reply that Katriona could muster.

"What was special about them?" Eyepatch asked. "Or are all fish special to you druids?"

Elanee shrugged. She paused, gazed about her for a moment, then started walking, westwards and up. Her steps were still much heavier than they normally were. Katriona followed her, then Luan, then Lila formed a rearguard with Eyepatch, which allowed her to commiserate with him over the chill of the Selverwater, though still not to find out his name.

They walked and trudged and limped through the deepest part of the night. Climbing, always, but never to a clear peak. Leaving the green plants of valley and waterside behind, they ascended again into the moorlands, jumping over narrow stream that split the heather, and following any sheep track that promised to lead in the right direction. Katriona's mood improved as the summit of a boulder-strewn ridge loomed over them. After they came upon a kind of meadow that rippled with limestone rills, she began to jump almost merrily over the hollows in the rock.

"Is this natural?" Lila asked. "I can't decide whether it's made by the weather or by craft." If it did turn out they they were walking over the foundations of an ancient hall, it would be time for another change of direction.

Katriona laughed a short, harsh laugh. "You don't need to be a druid to know that. Time and weather made it, and have made many such wonders. Though when I was a child, my grandmother used to say that they were made by a giant king that a clever orphan boy challenged to a competition – to see who could grow the most barley, of all things. The boy ploughed his little plot of earth on the banks of the river; the giant took his club and dragged it over the shoulders of the hills – and that's what made this what it is." She stamped her foot on one of the limestone ridges.

"So what happened then?" Luan asked. "The boy won, didn't he?"

"Well, yes. To a degree," said Katriona. Lila noticed that there was no insistence on the use of her military rank; the sergeant was forgetting to be a sergeant. "The boy grew five bushels of barley. The giant king grew none. All his seed was eaten by birds, or died in the shallow soil. But he was so furious at his humiliation that he caught the boy as he claimed his victory, and tore him apart. The boy had put too much faith in his own cleverness, and put his pride over his survival."

"Oh," said Luan.

"I was hoping for something more uplifting," said Lila. "Possibly involving marriage to a princess, fame, fortune and a happily ever after."

"The giant king lived happily ever after," said Elanee, who must have been listening too.

"But he didn't deserve to," said Luan.

"Why not?" Elanee retorted. Lila suspected that the druid was being mischievous. Yet it was so hard to tell.

"Because he was stupid, proud and a bad loser," said Luan. The young man appeared to have taken the story rather personally.

"The boy was foolish to invite a competition with a short-tempered giant. But I would have preferred an ending that was less brutal. They could both have won. Or both lost, and learned from it."

"That can't work," said Luan. "What kind of competition is that? Imagine a foot race where everyone wins or loses. Or throwing a coin, and whatever side you call, heads or tails, the result is the same. Someone must win and someone must lose."

"It's true that general harmony and agreement don't make for the most popular stories," Lila remarked, surprised by Luan's sudden vehemence. It was so far from his usual manners.

"There is another ending to the story. I heard it from folk who weren't my grandmother," said Katriona. "It goes like this: after the giant king had torn the boy apart, an old goddess looked down on all that was left of the clever orphan, and was sorry for him. She gathered up all the pieces that she could find, and laid them together. And she said to the bones and the flesh: 'If I restore you to your original form, the giant king will catch you and kill you again. Instead, I'll give you a different shape, so that you will be safe forever, and every year you can do what you most longed to do – outwit the king of the giants.'

"The sinews of the dead boy reknit themselves, but as his limbs joined together, they shrank and changed. His legs bent, his ears grew long, and fur sprouted from his skin. Breath from the goddess reanimated the body, but it was the body of a hare, and not a peasant boy. And the dalefolk, when they hear the summer thunderstorms raging, they say that it's the footsteps of the giant king as he chases up and down the hills after a little brown hare he can't ever lay hands on." Katriona coughed. "Anyway, that's an old nurse's yarn," she said, sounding unusually self-conscious. Lila wagered that story time hadn't figured a lot in her troop drills. "But it's why the hill we're on is called Haresrun. And Haresrun lies about a third of the way between the camp and the Neverwinter Road."

The old story from Katriona's childhood had been a welcome distraction. Reminded of the here and now, the weight of her haversack redoubled, the chasing from her wet boot returned, her calf muscles protested with every step, and she became intensely aware that she eaten nothing since the afternoon of the previous day. Katriona had probably expected her news to be heartening; for Lila, however, the thought that more than half the distance already covered lay ahead of them before they reached security lowered her spirits still further. She tried to restructure her feelings into something more hopeful using the technique she had developed in her wandering days: so they had walked about ten miles. That meant that after just five more miles, they would be half-way home. And after that it would be easy; every step would be taking her further into a landscape of familiar objects, further into secure territory. They might even run into a scouting party from the Keep.

Her mood improved a little. She at least regained enough energy to examine the condition of the group. Eyepatch was doing well enough considering his dowsing; he had removed his boots and stockings and was walking barefoot. All four of them were stooped, frowning, stiff. Even Katriona was starting to look tired.

They were still crossing the long flank of Haresrun when Elanee tripped, staggered, swayed. She did not fall, rebalancing herself quickly, but immediately afterwards she let herself sink down onto a thick patch of heather.

"Let me carry you," said Katriona.

Elanee shook her head in exhaustion. "No. I will be well again shortly." She tried to stand, failed, lent over and retched. Katriona took the water flask from the druid's belt and tilted it to her lips. While she ministered to the druid, Lila watched the sky. The moon and stars were at their brightest. Soon enough they'd begin to fade with with short midsummer night, and it would be dawn. Already the air smelled different.

"We'll keep going a bit longer, till we find a good place to camp," she said.

"You think we can afford to stop?" said Eyepatch.

"When the dawn comes, I want us to be lying low somewhere. Somewhere discreet and defensible, in preference."

Katriona nodded as she knelt by Elanee. "The druid needs rest. And food. We all do."

The talk of rest made Lila want to collapse at once onto the springing heather, and stretch all of her aching muscles to their limit, like a cat rolling on a sunlit terrace. How far would it be before they found a suitable campsite? Please gods, let it be soon.

Katriona helped Elanee to her feet and gave her an arm to lean on. "There are dozens of shallow caves in that part of Redfell over there," she said, pointing to the hill that lay to their north, higher and steeper than Haresrun. Dark as it was, the spaces of total blackness on its sheer southern slope marked out the locations of a few.

"We'd be heading in the wrong direction," said Lila. "And I don't like caves. Once you're in them there's nowhere to run. Your enemies can bottle you in and wait till you can't resist anymore." She's once done that to a band of smugglers on the coast. They'd run out of food on the first day, out of water on the second, and on the third day they'd run out of fight. They were lucky, and had been allowed to surrender. The youngest one she'd cut loose on the journey to Neverwinter to save him from the noose. "What's to the west?"

"There is another river," said Katriona. "Perhaps two or three miles further on. Before that we'll have to go down into a valley."

"So, let me guess, after the river we'll have to climb straight up the other side of the valley?"

"Yes. Then over a few more hills and down to the banks of the Dardeel. After that we can follow the river almost to the crossroads, or ford it to reach the Neverwinter Road more quickly."

"It doesn't sound that bad. No mountains, no fire giants, no dragons..." If she wasn't aching in so many places, if she hadn't lost what might be four fifths of her soldiers, she'd be almost light-hearted. She was certainly light-headed.

"We should stop before the next descent," said Katriona.

"Agreed. I feel safer on the high ground."

They went on, and the heather changed back to turf under their feet. Where the ground dipped between Haresrun and Redfell, reeds had colonized the undrained soil. A dozen rabbits grazed the lush grass at the sides of the bog. On further side, below Redfell, a cluster of power puffs celebrated the presence of drowsing sheep. The passing of five members of a foreign species, which stalked heavy-footed and clumsily over the higher slopes, left the native populations indifferent and unaffected. At most, they were worthy of a bored roll of the eye.

"I wish I could dig a warren like these rabbits have done," said Luan. "So deep that smoke and dogs couldn't chase me out. I'd sleep in it through the winter on a pile of hay, and come out in the summer to nibble on the grass near the mouth of my tunnel."

"That life has a certain appeal..." said Lila. "Aren't there gods that let the spirits of their followers return to Toril in a different form? You could probably file a request at the temple to be remade as a rabbit."

"You'd end up on a plate with a bunch of parsley sticking out of both ends," said Eyepatch. "Or looking after hundreds of ungrateful kids in a small burrow with enough grass for two. And the bigger rabbits next door eating all your clover..."

"Have you got hundreds of ungrateful kids?" Lila asked, grinning. She was walking on his right side, and the grin would have to be heard rather than seen.

"Never hung around long enough to ask," he said.

A grey pall lay over the night sky. An insomniac bird sang on the hilltop. Dawn was coming.

"There are druids in the Amtar Forest who live in warrens," said Elanee faintly. She sounded entirely serious.

"Really?" said Lila. "Why?"

"They belong to a sect that believes a connection to nature is best achieved by trying to understand the totality of one particular animal. Another branch – a gnomish sect from Lantan, I believe – decided to adapt the mountain orc as their project."

A moss-covered knoll lay in their path; it presented a challenge that Elanee wasn't equal to. Yet it did seem to Lila that Katriona swung her over the obstacle with undue force.

"There's nothing to understand about them," the blonde said in a tone that was not just lacking in amusement, but was verging on the savage. "Hatred and violence in a flesh box."

"The gnomes' tribal dances are said to be quite impressive," said Elanee, continuing the conversation unconcernedly as soon as she was able to touch the ground again. "People travel from far and wide to view them."

"I bet they do!" said Eyepatch.

Something was nagging Lila about Elanee's little excursion into druidic lore. "Did you learn about that in the merelands?" she asked. She couldn't quite square what she knew of the Circle of the Mere, unsmiling high priests of doom and gloom to a man, with gossip about the eccentric practices of distant cults.

There was a pause before Elanee spoke. She seemed all at once embarrassed. "No. My education in the Merdelain was more...focused. I discovered that account in the Blacklake Library. She paused again, before adding, as if the admission was being forced out of her, "I have a reader's pass."

Lila smiled to herself as the darkened hillsides pressed against her vision. How near the brightly lit atrium of the library felt in her imagination, and the arcade of stainglass-windowed shops that lay around it. The lake and the lamps and the pleasure boats bobbing on their moorings.

They walked on, and Lila kept her eyes on the slight figure of the druid. Of all the flowers to bloom in the mere, this shy little elf might be one of the strangest. If they survived the next day, she promised herself to put more time into understanding her. For the longest time, she hadn't been able to forgive the druid for not being Amie, her friend dead these three years who had so much wanted to go travelling.

"Stop!" said Katriona. She had come to a juddering halt, and flung up a hand in warning. The memory of Amie fell away, and she hurried to join Katriona.

The latest sheep track they'd been following had terminated, as had the ground. At her feet there was an immense, abrupt hollow in the earth. Here and there boulders protruded from its sides, but for the most part, the slope at her feet was dry, smooth and sandy. The side opposite her was no side at all; it was open, a natural window hanging over the next valley on the west. Was the hollow as dry at its base as it was in its upper reaches? There was only one way to be sure. She sat down on the rim, and carefully lowered herself down the steep banks.

For the first part of the descent, she kept control by digging the base of her palms into the loose surface. For the last fifteen feet, she simply slid and rolled until she had reached the bottom. Down here, it was a mixture of grass and shale. Well-drained, as she had hoped. A stream probably trickled out of the exposed western side in wet weather, but at present all was as dry as old bones. She turned, desirous to see if it was possible to leave the hollow by the way she'd entered it. This site might be a could place to camp.

An accelerating streak of dust and pebbles sped towards her. She sprang to the side as Eyepatch arrived her her level. He picked himself up and dusted himself off.

"I thought you were an ankheg," she said.

He inspected a rip in this leg of his breeches. "Is this the campsite?" he asked, squinting around in the dim light. "Not bad."

He moved to the western side of the hollow; Lila followed him, as the noise of pebbles being dislodged above them gave warning of more potential collisions. Standing at the gap in the sides, she could see the next stage of the trek spread out ahead of her in hazy receding lines. A low flat valley. Long grasses crowded into small flood plain. The light of the fading moon shining on water. And beyond that, more hills, of course. A wave of them moving towards a precipitous crest at their northern end.

Mountains intimidated her. She had been raised in a flat country. Its variations were in depth, not height. The Sword Mountains had created no favourable impression on her, being barren and orc-ridden in the part she'd visited...and as for the Crags, it was her fervent hope that she would never need to set foot there again. But these dales were something else. They were the foothills of the Sword Mountains, yet she would never have guessed that from the sight of them. These dales were their own place. Their own realm.

"We're almost at Hunters Brook. At last," said Katriona, joining Lila at the door to the west. The narrow river was becoming visible without the reflective assistance of the moon. A layer of mist lay over the surface, and laced through the valley grasses.

"Hunters Brook," Lila echoed. Her voice cracked from the lack of moisture in her throat. "Let's see...was there a hunter who drowned in it?" Although the question was supposed to be playful, what left her mouth just sounded depressed.

"What? No!" said Katriona. "Hunters used to tie their day's catch to rafts and send them down this river. It's not wide, but it gets deep fast after it rises in the mountains. The Selverwater's too shallow to transport anything for most of the year, and the Dardeel's too wild."

"You know a lot about it. I couldn't tell you anything about the eastern reaches of the merelands. Except that the inhabitants were held to be fumble-fisted inbred types by the cultivated folk of West Harbour. I don't even know if there was ever an East Harbour."

"I've been in this area more than once. The last time was with a friend from the Old Owl Well militia. We were gathering supplies, and camped on the bank a few miles upriver, I think. It was a summer's day. The water tasted sweet – much better than the acrid stuff at the Well.

Katriona stared at the river flowing darkly between reed-thicketed banks. Lila too felt the draw. "Perhaps it's not tainted like the Selverwater?" she croaked.

"Perhaps," said Katriona.

"How much drinking water do we have left?"

"He's got one," she said, nodding to where Eyepatch had hunkered down. He was sharing his flask with Luan. "And there's whatever's left in the flask you gave Elanee." Not much to last three people through a fifteen mile hike in the afternoon sun.

"Well, no one has ever died of thirst in a few hours," said Lila, mustering her remaining powers of optimism. She walked across to where Elanee lay, intending to ask her about the river water. However, the druid had rested her head on her arms, and appeared deep in sleep. That sight offered some hope. The sooner she recovered from her exertions, the sooner she'd be able to facilitate their flight with her spells. The presence of an elf pulsing with magic would mean that their group's survival was finally a matter of likelihood rather than wishful thinking.

Luan and Eyepatch were both drowsing; soon they'd be as far gone as Elanee. Lila watched Luan a little. At rest, hair hanging in limp curls across his forehead, cheeks smooth as a woman's, the soldier boy looked like the first human to have crossed directly from infancy to manhood without first having negotiated the laborious journey through adolescence. Eyepatch, too, had lost about a decade. He was sleeping on his right side, and seen from above in profile, his face seemed whole and unscathed. She shook her head. Mustn't get attached.

Careful not to nudge the men back into wakefulness, she pulled Eyepatch's haversack towards her. Inside was another bag, and within that was a loaf of bread and a large hunk of cheese. Using the dagger she wore on her thigh as a breadknife, she cut two fifths from the loaf, and the same fraction from the cheese; the remainder she replaced in the haversack. She picked up the flask that lay near Elanee and shook it, which made a satisfying sloshing sound; it could be over half full. For a while she dithered over whether to take it at all or to leave it for later. But she needed energy; for energy she had to eat; to eat she needed a throat that wasn't as dry as the wastes of Anauroch. Thus resolved, the took the flask along with the food and returned to the natural window where Katriona sat, still looking out over the wafting grasses in the valley. She sat down opposite her and passed her half of the bread and cheese.

"I was going to ask you if we should camp here," said Lila, "but the other three anticipated the decision."

Katriona leant her back against a shelf of weathered rock that contributed to the hollow's unusual form. Her right leg was stretched out down the western slope that led to the river. A steep slope, but not so steep that a hasty exit might prove difficult.

"This place will do," she said. "It's not ideal. No campsite in enemy territory ever is." She didn't seem interested in the food. Lila admired her composure. All her self-discipline was necessary to keep her from falling on her own hunk of bread and cheese like a wolf and finishing the lot in a few bites. Instead, she distracted herself by pulling off her boots and stockings, and burying her raw toes in a patch of sandy soil as deeply as they'd go. Next, she peeled back the shoulder of her jerkin and inspected the bruises that the straps of her haversack had inflicted. In a couple of areas, the skin was broken. She was capable of two minor healing spells. With Elanee not yet recovered, it wasn't wise to use them up on something so trivial.

"You should let Luan carry that for you," said Katriona. "The lad's not made of glass."

Lila shook her head. All her instincts shouted "No!" at her before she could try to put the reason into words. "I need to feel the weight on me. It's a reminder that this can still be worthwhile. And Luan has none of the powers of the statue, and hasn't had all the practice at escaping that I've had. I'm not sure how long he'd last if the shadows mobbed him."

She couldn't hold out anymore. Uncorking the flask, she took a deep draught. For as long as she could, she held it in her mouth, letting the water sooth her dry tongue and palate. After swallowing, she replaced the cork, and put the flask on the ground near Katriona. That would have to suffice.

The bread she tore into small chunks to spare her jaws from extra work. It was black bread, no doubt chosen for the expedition because it kept better than the white cottage loaves that the kitchens of Crossroad Keep could turned out by the hundred. The crust on this one was as thick her little finger. As she ate, chewing each bite slowly to delay the point when she had no more left, she listened to Katriona. It felt like eavesdropping on a private discussion that she wasn't meant to hear, for Katriona spoke quietly, and didn't seem to be addressing her thoughts to anyone in particular. For the first time, Lila noticed the dark hollows under her sergeant's eyes. Was what she had taken a few moments ago for a will of adamantine in fact not more than the effect of extreme exhaustion and stress?

"Once we start moving again, it'll be quite easy...the worst will be behind us. After five more miles, we'll be back within the area we regularly patrol...and those last ten miles aren't challenging ones. The climb after Hunter's Brook is steep, but still easier than what we did last night, when we had to ascend almost from nothing. After that, we can go south-west over the hill, or follow our course west until we've forded the Dardeel. My vote's for the Dardeel. The northern face of Hollavel has a bad reputation among the villagers. Sheep go missing...people go missing...and the Dardeel has plenty of fording places. It hasn't rained much recently, so it won't be in a troublesome mood...not liable to tricks."

"You should drink some water," said Lila in a state of some concern. "And eat. You never know when you'll be called on to carry another unconscious elven druid over a hill."

Her lips twitching in cautious mirth, Katriona accepted the water flask. While she ate and drank, Lila took over their limping dialogue. "It's funny," she said, "to be here. I can hardly believe it myself. Even after the fight with Lorne Starling, I thought I was going to find work at the Neverwinter playhouse, or open my own shop. But here I am." She changed tack. "And here you are. We're lucky you decided to come with us at the last minute like that. We'd be dead without you. Elanee certainly, and me most likely as well."

Katriona was gnawing half-heartedly on a piece of crust. A light frown passed over her face as she listened, but she didn't respond. So Lila tried again with a different bait, that was neither fully in play nor in earnest.

"Lord Nasher will be impressed to hear of it. If he hasn't been impressed by all that you've done for the Keep so far. If you have your eye on a tithe or land – the honourable Countess Katriona of the Eastern Marches, for example – now is the time to pursue it."

Lila patted her sergeant's back as she choked on a lump of cheese. When she had recovered, after taking a swig of water, she shook her head. "I did a grand job here, didn't I? One of our best soldiers dead, and seven others could be too. Besides, I don't want anything from Nasher. The old fox has already started to take all the credit for Old Owl Well. You wouldn't think a local militia had spent years dying there to hold back the orc tribes. You watch out, Lila – he may not be a total brute, but deep down he's not so different to the orc chieftains, even if he doesn't realize it himself. His favour will last just as long as your usefulness. What he gives, he can take away."

"And you agreed to fight for him anyway."

"It's not him I'm fighting for. His favour and tithes and gold -"

" - _I. O. U._ s these days, I think -" put in Lila before she could stop herself.

Katriona ignored the interjection. "None of that matters. It's all rare tripe, and neither use nor ornament."

"Then was does matter?"

"Neverwinter. Highcliff. Leilon. Phandelin. Conyberry. It's taken decades – centuries – to reach the point where civilization – proper, established civilization – can thrive again on this part of the Sword Coast. For the wilderness to retreat. For caravan traders to take the road north without first going to the notary in Athkatla to have their will confirmed." She unhooked the ties that held back her long hair, and shook it out. It came almost down to her waist. With impatient hands, she rebound it more tightly, so that not a single blonde wisp could curl next to her cheeks. "But I've said enough. What about you?"

Lila shrugged. "The gith or the King of Shadows or the Luskans would hound me to death if I ran. Or visitors from the lower planes," she said, thinking of who might send them. "And I really like my bed at the Keep. It has thirteen separate layers. I counted them last week. If I stopped being Knight Captain, I don't think Lord Nasher would even let me hold onto the counterpane with my initials on."

"That's not what I'm talking about, Lila. I know all that. But why did you decide to lead this mission in person? You have people who could have done this kind of fetch-and-carry for you. It doesn't make _sense_."

It was a question that Lila would have preferred to remain unasked. To return a flippant answer, however, would mean that Katriona would spend the rest of the war never deviating from the strictest military etiquette. She closed her eyes. Opening them, she let them dwell on the river valley as it grew steadily brighter, instead of on Katriona's wide, pale face. "Do you know how long it's been since I went out on a proper mission?" she began. "I do. It's been three months. And that was just to meet Natale, which barely counts.

"A couple of weeks ago I found myself in conversation with Torio Claven. She was on top form. Bursting to say how grateful everyone was at the Keep because I'd been giving thought to my safety. What a relief it was that I'd stopped rushing into danger, and had accepted that my survival was crucial to victory. And so on. Later that evening I walked past the mess and heard them singing "The Goblin Drums". You know, the song about the general that flees in terror when a child plays his drum outside his bedroom window."

Lila came to a stop. Her cheeks felt hot as she remembered Torio's expression. It hadn't been her intention to go into so much detail. Hitherto, she'd mentioned her encounter with the former Luskan ambassador to no one, not even Khelgar and Neeshka. She chanced a look in Katriona's direction. The sergeant was staring at her in astonishment. "Well?"

"Gods preserve us, Lila. And I thought you were clever!"

"But – what, really? Clever?" She wondered if she should be angry or flattered. In so far as she'd assumed Katriona had an opinion of her, it was that she should be seen and not heard.

"To let yourself be mislead by the needling of that Luskan creature! And as for the song – soldiers are always singing it, and others of the same kind. It's how they cope. The only messes where you'll find them chanting psalms about the merits of their officers are the ones where there's a dark figure in the corner with a whip and a set of finger clamps under their cloak."

Lila shook her head, unconvinced. "The needling was only able to affect me because it was true. When I was given Crossroad Keep, it wasn't because I'd sat so fabulously on my backside in The Sunken Flagon, and let other people risk their lives at my suggestion. Whatever plans there were, I helped to carry out. Half the folk in Neverwinter got it into their heads that I was some sort of divine avatar sent down to the Prime to save them from their enemies, and they had no idea who I really was, or what I really looked like. What I'm trying to say is -" she breathed in deeply, and searched for the right words, so that she could bring this humiliating experience to a close as quickly as possible. Remembering that Luan and Eyepatch were sleeping not far away, she dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper.

"Realistically, I know, and you know, that we aren't likely to win this war by conventional means. Neverwinter can barely afford a standing army strong enough to resist Luskan. But the Greycloaks at the Keep don't seem to realize how doomed the whole undertaking is. How probable it is that we'll be overwhelmed and they'll be killed. They've heard the stories about the ten foot warrior that can slay dozens of necromancers before breakfast. And even though the men know me – they can see it must be nonsense – still, I think, part of them goes on believing. Believes that I'm their lucking charm. That while I'm around nothing irrecoverably awful will happen to them.

"I need them to believe in me, because I need to believe in them. Do you remember at the big party last summer - the moment when Casavir and Bevil lowered the last stone into place on the curtain wall?" Katriona's eyes brightened in the affirmative. Of course she would remember that. "It was a perfect day. We had the Greycloaks in their new armour lining the courtyard and the wall-walks. As the stone came to rest, Shandra and Neeshka were up on the tower, hoisting the flags. And I stood just outside the gates, listening to the band playing and taking in the sight of this vast fortress, at the corners and curves and levels and cornices, and at the sun shining on the cuirasses of the guards...and I thought that as long as this Keep was ours, we'd be okay. I'd be okay..." Her throat was too sore to continue. In any case, she'd run out of matter. She wiped her brow.

For the first time, Katriona smiled at her properly; it was a smile that dimpled her cheeks and made creases unfold at the corners of her eyes. "We'd better get these returned to your magicians, then," she said, patting one of the Illefarn statue heads through a layer of canvas. "After they've done their work, we can picnic in the courtyard while our enemies turn to dust in the moat." She paused. "Oh, and you've set me straight on one thing."

"What's that?"

Katriona's smile curled in mischief. "I assumed you insisted on leading this mission because you wanted to impress that warlock friend of yours."

Initially, Lila's instinct was to deny the existence of any friendship with Ammon. Then she reconsidered. Denial would make Katriona retreat to her usual distance, and would close the door to further confidences on the sergeant's part, when there was one thing that Lila still very much wanted to have corroborated. And they were sitting in a hole between nowhere and nowhere else as the war's climax approached with ever hastening steps. A few rumours couldn't do any harm.

"That thought," Lila conceded, "may have encouraged me." She let her lip curl into a half-smile. "Just a bit." Katriona looked happy to have her guess confirmed. "He's a hard man to please. The only thing he values is victory. That's what I'm trying to bring him today. She lifted her haversack and let it fall. It was now or never. Putting her head on one side, Lila asked, "And you – you came so as bring back Elanee, didn't you? You'd heard the arguments and expected trouble. So you volunteered at the last minute, and you were making sure for the whole terrible night from the ambush on that she'll get back to the Keep – and to someone who values her."

The new warmth that Lila had lately noticed on Katriona's face had disappeared. Had she gone too far? But soon, the other woman nodded. Slowly and sadly, but without anger. "Yes," was all she said.

They seemed to be standing at the edge of a long silence. Or semi-silence. Now that the conversation had worn itself out, Lila could detect a regular wheeze issuing from the area where Elanee slept. The elf was lucky to be able to sleep so easily. Even if Katriona took the watch alone, Lila's anxiety would keep her wide awake.

"I knew," said Katriona. Before Lila could express her bewilderment, an explanation was granted. "I knew that elves snore. From long before I had the druid buzzing away under my ear. In the militia at Old Owl Well there was a moon elf from Waterdeep. Alcuin. An odd sort of elf, but brave as a lion. He actually asked me to marry him. I asked for time to think about it. And then Casavir arrived, and I refused. Because I realized that whatever happened afterwards, it could never be fair to say yes. Anyway, he's a fine snorer, is our Alcuin...snores almost as well as he kills orcs. He was in Callum's field hospital when you and your crew showed up. Driving everyone else in the tent half-demented with the noise he could make... I don't know where he went after he got better. Perhaps home to Waterdeep. Wherever he is, I hope he's safe."

Lila wasn't sure how to respond. Her suspicion had been confirmed and more. Pity surged through her. For Katriona. For herself, and her own predicament. "Waterdeep's doing well," she said. "It's had a better five years than Neverwinter, for sure. If he's there, he'll be safe enough."

Katriona smiled once more, and then closed her eyes. Her head began to lean towards her right shoulder. It wasn't a deep sleep, but at least she was enjoying some kind of repose.

Afraid of being drawn into the general somnolence of the hollow, Lila shifted her position, going from sitting to kneeling. To keep her mind occupied, she used her dagger to sketch out a rough map of the area in the sand and grit. After adding all the topographical features, waterways and man-made structures that she knew, she drew little stick figures to represent herself and her companions.

She checked the sky. It still seemed too grey and intermediate for it to count as morning. They'd have to wait longer...

About to start on a map of the Mere of Dead Men, she paused, stuck her dagger in the ground, listened. A feeling of intense dread assailed her. Her skin prickled.

She stood up and stared at the rim of the hollow. One moment ago, it had been deserted. Now, from one end to the other, it was lined with shadows.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

So far they were holding their positions. Lila a traveller who crosses the path of a black bear in a lonely place, Lila kept watching them, not blinking, not turning aside. She edged sideways, until her fingers brushed Katriona's shoulder. More was not necessary. The sound of a sword being removed from its sheath was proof enough of that.

At the same instant that Katriona drew her sword, a kind of fuzzy, intermittent disruption passed in a wave through the uncreatures ranged above them. They still held their position. Lila guessed that wouldn't last much longer.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Katriona, stooped, moving from Elanee to Luan and Eyepatch. They woke and readied themselves more quickly than she had hoped. Even Luan pulled himself upright in near silence.

"There's a gap in the shadows near the river bank," said Elanee close to her ear. The shadows flickered again. Most had bestial forms, all claw and tooth and mandible. But on the right, one was human-shaped. Lila didn't look too closely, in case she knew who it was – or had once been.

"Keep an eye on them for me," she told Elanee. "Don't turn your back on them." She wanted to see the gap for herself. Standing at the western edge of the basin, it was clear that the path down to the river still lay open. Precisely the path they'd been planning to take and there it was, served up to them like meat pie at a tavern. Lines of shadows, about two filed deep in living terms, blocked the northern and southern routes along the grassy flood plain. She couldn't see any more shadows waiting in reserve, but that didn't mean they weren't there.

"I don't like it," said Katriona.

"Me neither," said Lila. To the others, she said – was it paranoia to worry that the shadows were listening? "Follow me and cut down whatever gets in your way."

She ran from the hollow between the limestone buttresses and down the slope beyond. Her boots and stockings were lying abandoned beside a mound of scree. Never mind that. Didn't the Aglarondi Knights fight in their bare-feet through choice? Or perhaps it was the Knights of Alaghôn...

For about twenty yards, she made straight for the river and the west. Rocky soil became soft and springy under her naked skin. To her right and left, the double lines of shadows watching, unmoving. As she reached the midpoint between the hollow and the eastern bank, she wheeled round abruptly, and drew her sabre. Flight turned into a charge. She accelerated. Held the blade in outside guard, hilt loose in her hand, ready for the first rotating cut from shoulder to waist.

At such a moment, it would have been really useful to have a glowing sword surround by a numinous aura that could decide the outcome of a battle by its mere presence. Coincidentally, she owned one. What a fucking pity she'd left it at home along with her eye-shadow and lip rouge.

She was on them. Bringing down her sabre, she slashed through the first three shadows that stood in her way. Three more. She struck again. Sliced down, up and across. Where the restless patches of cold darkness had been, was again the reality of sun on the grass. She sped up, the mellow sunshine of an early summer morning seeping into her right cheek, her heart pounding; the statue head bouncing against her hipbone. She was clear. Still, she ran. There was nothing to do but run. Had the others understood? She was running so hard that she couldn't even hear whether there were footsteps behind her. Were they being surrounded and pulled down like deer? And still, she ran.

Only a fit of coughing brought her to a halt. It doubled her over; she spat phlegm to the side, hacked and choked and wheezed.

Someone slapped her on the back. Eyepatch. Another barefoot warrior. He wasn't breathing too easily himself. Then Elanee came to a stop beside her. Next Luan. And finally Katriona.

Elanee's hair and skin were back to their normal colour. Nor did she seem to have been overly taxed by the sprint.

"You're looking better," Lila managed to gasp at the druid, before forcing herself upright and setting off again at a steady jog, readjusting the straps of her haversack as she went.

Her heart rate sank from the agonizing to the merely uncomfortable. Just as she felt she could keep up the pace for as long as necessary, she found her feet sinking into an inch or more of clinging black mud wherever she set them. For a stretch of half a mile ahead, the green full-bladed grasses became scarce, while clumps of reeds sprouted from the dank earth. The rotting and musty smell of a river bed at low tide spread across the plain and under her nostrils. A dozen streams of Haresrun and Redfell were sucking, squelching, and drawing her back as she strained towards the higher ground. She wasn't even jogging anymore, but engaged in a fight for each step forward.

"I wish that you had brought the Sword of Gith with you," sighed Elanee, as she overtook. "It could have proved most useful."

"You think?" Lila grunted, wondering whether she was too much in pain to be irritated.

"Oh yes," said the druid, looking almost as pleased as Grobnar did if you asked him a question that couldn't be answered with a 'yes' or 'no'. "It might have stopped both ambushes. Even if you did not trust yourself to use it, the sword would have served as a deterrent."

If Lila could have gritted her teeth, she would have. Panting, she felt surprised. It turned out that the burning in her lungs was compatible with feelings of extreme annoyance with the druid's gift for telling the unprettified truth at precisely the wrong time.

Dragging on every shred of air, taking it in through huge gasps as if she was in a rose garden and it was the last night before the end of the universe, she threw herself into the struggle. At last, the ground was becoming more solid. She put on a burst of speed, and was able to overtake Elanee in revenge. The mire lay behind. Haresrun too. She was running in the shadow of Redfell.

Of course, it couldn't go on. All at once, her anger broke, her strength too, and her legs began shaking. They wrenched her into a kind of hopping walk. Needing to stop, not daring to. And Elanee breezed past her again. In terms of the druid's likeability, the sickness had been a real improvement.

Lila dropped back among the other three humans. It was probably for the best. Officers who led the charge when the enemy was some distance to their rear were vulnerable to having their motives questioned. Speed was not the quality troops most valued in their commanders.

They carried on together in silence, except for the thump thump thump of their feet and their harsh breathing. Eventually, Elanee allowed herself to be absorbed by the group of her four slower companions, as they huffed and puffed around heaps of gritstone moraine that sprawled at intervals across their path like bodies.

A renewed attack by the shadows would have been quite welcome. Any opportunity to stand still. The eastern flank of Redfell seemed determined to last forever. But why wish them further north? Whatever progress they made was progress in the wrong direction; Crossroad Keep was getting further and further away. All that supported her was the resolution that this time, she wouldn't be the first to crack. She wasn't going to supply Torio or anyone else with yet more material.

Relief came from an unexpected source. Elanee had briefly run ahead of the group, and returned from her excursion with more than an expression of self-satisfaction.

"About a mile ahead," she said, "there is a building."

"What?" said Katriona, moving from a jog to a walk and from a walk to a standstill. Giving thanks to the Gods, Lila copied her sergeant's example. "What...kind of building?" Katriona was so out of breath that she had to pause after every other word. "A sheepfold? A barn? A cottage?"

Elanee shrugged. "I cannot say. It seemed large. It is perhaps a farmhouse of some sort."

"A farm? They'll have food and drink!" Luan whispered eagerly. His hair was stuck to his head with sweat. Lila felt her own forehead, but there was hardly any moisture there. She was too dried-out to sweat.

"Their supplies aren't going to be tainted, are they?" Lila asked. "The taint wouldn't have got inside – for example – beer barrels?"

"Beer barrels!" said Eyepatch, closing his left eye in anticipated rapture.

"I do not know," Elanee replied. "But the farm could be a trap."

"Hear that?" said Katriona, addressing Luan and Eyepatch and, Lila suspected, herself, in intention if not in direction of speech. "No running in their headlong before we've scouted the bounds."

Without debate, but through the mutual consent that derives from mutual exhaustion, they carried on at a walking pace. Lila had to resist the urge to look continuously over her shoulder at the way they'd come. If there were shadows in pursuit, they wouldn't be visible to the naked eye.

It took longer than she'd hoped to come within sight of the building Elanee had spotted. A high wall was the first sign of it, jutting out from behind the last westerly trespass of Redfell. At first, she feared that what lay ahead was a farmhouse in the past tense. Soon, however, the sloping line of a gable emerged, and she realised that what she had taken for the house itself was nothing but the garth wall. Individual beams and chimney stacks could be distinguished, all bright and neat in the morning sun; they looked fantastically normal. After the night she'd had, a gingerbread cottage or hut with chicken legs would have hardly warranted a raised eyebrow.

The garth and its contents stood on a shelf of land a few feet above the floodplain. Instead of curving round in a protective oval, each end of the garth wall approached the valley side, where it shrank and continued up the fell in parallel ascending lines, travelling towards the north-east. For defence at the rear, the farm had to rely on the steepness of the climb, and on the massive rear wall of the farmhouse. No smoke blew from the dozen chimney pots. Was that a warning, or a reassurance?

"Wait," said Lila, reckoning they were close enough. "Elanee, would you...?"

The druid nodded, and slipped away. At full strength, she might have transformed herself into a beast or bird, as Lila had seen her do so often in the past. But today she kept her own form, and relied on the dun colouring of her clothes and on her instincts to lend her discretion.

Lila was able to observe her darting across the floodplain with a crablike gait as far as the long grasses that bordered the river's edge. A crow flew from a young willow on the further bank. She looked away just long enough to ascertain that the crow hadn't been startled by something worse. It was long enough to lose Elanee.

"Where -?" Luan began.

"Shh!" Katriona cut him off without looking away from an alder bush that lay ten yards from the iron gate in the garth wall. Lila stared and stared at the bush. Once, she thought she saw a flash of russet hair. But it could just have been a beam of light shining on a harvest of dead leaves.

Her attention drifted from her immediate surroundings to the group's immediate future. "Don't travel at dawn and dusk," he'd said. Well, they'd survived the dawn, barely. They had about twelve hours to get to a secure position; no one would escape the next sunset trap. That much was sure. They could cross the river and cut straight across the country to the Neverwinter Road, and its somewhat regular patrols. That would mean hoping to evade whatever snare the shadows had been trying to lure them into at the hollow. And it would mean crossing the river. Hunter's Brook was not nearly as narrow as it had seemed from the slopes of Haresrun; added to that, it was murky, deep and flowed past its banks with a deceptive speed. No lazy river of the plains was this. Thus far, she hadn't noticed any piles of tree trunks or unused joists lying helpfully abandoned on a spit of land.

Elanee stepped from a fold in Redfell's western flank. Precisely the direction from which Lila hadn't expected the druid to approach. She could teach Neeshka a thing or two about stealth. Hells, she might be able to catch Bishop out. Not when he was sober, but – well, he was rarely sober these days.

"Nothing," said Elanee. "I watched and listened. I felt no trace of our enemy. There was-" she paused, frowned. "-there was something. Something that did not belong to the Shadow Empire."

"It could be the farmers," suggested Luan.

"No," said Elanee. "There are no dead creatures there, and no living ones either, save for the skaters on the garth pool and the wrens in the fruit trees."

"Good," said Eyepatch. "That means there's no one to set up a racket when I eat all their food and drink all their drink."

Katriona gave him a sharp look, but didn't upbraid him. For her part, Lila was imagining a larder full of biscuits and cheese and bottles of sweet cordial and many other delightful things. Apricots preserved in brandy. Smoked fish and salted ham. Ginger cake. She pressed her hands against her stomach. Oh gods, the thought of a slice of pie with pickles and wine...

"We can leave a note..." said Luan. He was eyeing the garth gate like a dog watching his master devour a sausage. "And it's war-just, like the extra taxes. They can't hold it against us."

"Absolutely," said Lila, although left with the strong impression that Luan had never met any of the local farmers. Those she'd encountered would, if offered a hundred coin for nothing, have wanted to know why it wasn't a thousand. "Come on."

Sabre bared, just in case of surprises, she led the group towards the elaborate cast iron gate. Behind the gate, she could see a cobbled path winding towards a farmhouse built on a quasi-manorial scale. he panelled wooden door was bordered by two statues of elven hunters; one carried a bow, the other a wand and a knife. The central mass of the building rose up for three storeys with no windows at ground level, arrow slits on the first story, and round glazed windows at the top, behind which the true living quarters must lie. So far, so promising: there was plenty of room for a kitchen.

One yard before the gate, she stopped. Flat on the ground and with sharp edges of clearly recent manufacture was an engraved flagstone. It was made from the same basalt that was used to reinforce the Keep's outer wall. Her first thought was to wonder who was buried under it. Then she read the message, cut into the surface in squat, forceful characters.

THIS DWELLING IS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF KNIGHT CAPTAIN LILA FARLONG.

NEITHER THIEF NOR MONSTER NOR ANY INTERLOPER SHALL CROSS THIS

THRESHOLD WITH IMPUNITY.

TRAVELLER, TAKE HEED.

STRANGER, BEWARE.

BANDIT, ENTER AT YOUR PERIL.

Fucking damnation. She remembered now. How five families in the Keep's vicinity had refused the evacuation order for fear of looters. It had seemed a good idea at the time to persuade the mostly elderly and intransigent inhabitants of remote farms to leave for safety, offering to ward their houses. A party of young mages from the Cloaktower had done the actual warding, but the man she'd asked to design the wards was...

In a fury of hunger and embarrassment, she struck the garth wall. With her gauntlets, she packed quite a punch. But that was nothing in comparison with the force that knocked her from her feet, and swept her several feet back, so that she landed in a heap on top of Luan and Eyepatch. Bars of light were glowing along the joins in the old garth wall. Behind the gate itself, she saw as she picked herself up, there was something forming. Humanoid and muscular, but consisting of displaced swirls of colour, without any facial features save for a pair of white eyes that glared much as its designer was wont to.

"What is it?" Katriona asked.

"I'm not sure," said Lila, helping her two soft landings to stand up. "I've never seen anything exactly like it before. It might be a magical golem."

"Is it one of the evacuation measures? Can we get past it?"

"Yes, it is, and no, we can't. Not unless there's a loophole built into the enchantment."

Lila stepped carefully onto the flagstone. She kept her eyes on the golem-creature. It stayed where it was, arms folded, implacable.

"I am Lila Farlong," she said, enunciating each word separately, though her knowledge of arcane creations did not extend to an understanding of their perception of the material world. It might not matter if she spoke clearly or spoke gobbledygook. "The Knight Captain of Crossroad Keep. Let me pass."

The golem let its arms fall to its sides. Her breath caught on the sudden onrush of hope. Could the golem actually have been enchanted to recognise her?

No.

"No one may pass." There was a voice, which came from everywhere, save from the golem's mouth, for it had none. And the voice was really voices. Five young, and in the background, lurking under them, the hoarse echo of a someone familiar. "No one may pass, except those that bear the blood of the family. The key is blood. Go, stranger."

"How about a message? Can you at least send a message to the Keep?"

"Blood of the family is the key. The key is blood."

She squeezed her eyes shut. Fuck you, Ammon Jerro, she thought. Fuck you. Couldn't you have altered your spell just a little bit? Couldn't some part of you have decided to do things differently?

She stepped back from the gate. Was there a means of altering the magical defences so that they sent a warning to Crossroad Keep? Sand would have known, though if he were here, they could have sent out a hidden signal from the moment the first alarm sounded. Next time she'd lure him of of the library with promises of an expenses-paid trip to the classiest magic shops in Neverwinter. He'd probably accept a retinue of heavy dragoons as a sensible precaution, but it might be more difficult to sell him on Casavir and Khelgar. Let there be a next time...

Not wanting to see the expressions of her companions, or for them to see hers, she watched the river that sped so assuredly southwards. Angry at herself for her dejection, she made herself trace the river's northern pathway. It couldn't stay deep and dark for long. All the hills on its eastern side were lofty, blue and grey at their tops. The far horizon was a great brown fell that stretched from west to east, a seemingly unavoidable barrier from which only mountain streams would flow.

As she was mastering herself, she listened to the conversation going on behind her, waiting to see if she would have to intervene.

"Blood of the family..." Luan murmured.

"Pity they're not here," said Eyepatch. "I'd make sure that thing there got what it wanted." He might be joking.

"It wouldn't need to be much, I reckon," continued Luan. "Could you be kin to the folk that lived her, sergeant. Not mam or sister, like, but cousin? A really distant cousin."

Katriona didn't answer immediately. Then she muttered. "I suppose it's possible," and Lila heard the sound, which had become unmistakeable, of steel scraping on steel.

"No," she said swiftly. Spinning round, she saw Katriona walking towards the gate, her right hand holding a dagger, her left arm bare. "No," she said again. She pushed the glut of horror that had risen in her at the sight to one side, as she reached for the words to convince them that Katriona mustn't carry out her intention. "The spell couldn't be tricked that easily. I know the man that made it. Blood would mostly like be only the first stage."

"But surely it's worth trying?" said Katriona. The blood she was so willing to shed flushed through her cheeks.

"No," said Lila, "It's not. Believe me," it's not."

"We need more provisions. We'll be able to get back to the Keep much faster if we're marching on full stomachs and with enough to drink."

"The Keep is just a few hours away. But we'll never reach it if we throw our lives away on these wards for the sake of a hunk of bread that probably isn't even there. We're so close now!"

"We _were_ so close, until the shadows drove us miles off course. This diversion will cost us at least two hours, perhaps much more.

"And those shadows are all the more reason to press on and not tarry about here."

"I don't bleed slowly," Katriona snapped back with acid in her voice.

Lila scowled.

"Er, Knight Captain? Sergeant?" It was Luan. He looked embarrassed to see his superiors quarrelling; Eyepatch looked amused. However trying the circumstances, Lila regretted throwing away the last tattered fragments of the illusion of control.

"Yes?"

"Elanee is waving to you." He pointed. Elanee was standing near the north-western section of the garth wall. As Lila and the others caught up with her, she beckoned them along the wall to the place where the ascent of the fell began. An area of grass a couple of feet wide seemed dirty – smudged. Stooping, in obedience to Elanee's direction, she saw that so did some of the stones at the wall's base. She ran a finger across them, as gently as she could to avoid another flying lesson. The tip of the finger came back covered in black powder. Ash.

"Something got fried by those wards pretty bad," Eyepatch observed.

"A shadow," said Elanee. "But it was not the enchantment that drove it away. Look."

Growing all along the outer rim of the garth in such profusion that Lila was amazed she hadn't noticed it earlier was a thick line of shrubs, no higher than dandelions, and of a similar form, though with tiny seed pods in place of the lion's fuzz of teeth.

"Do you recognize them?" Elanee asked, allowing a smile to sneak into the question, for all that her face was as earnest as ever.

"Can we pass on the lesson in botany?" said Katriona, still pink-faced from the argument. "What is it?"

Elanee ignored her. "Lila. You must remember."

Uneasy to be the sole object of the druid's unblinking green-eyed stare, Lila played for time. She plucked one long leaf from among the hundreds that were thriving at her feet, and examined it. Variegated colours, and edges that a very tidy caterpillar appeared to have gnawed on in regularly diminishing increments. Nature was strange. Then she knelt down and press on one of the pods. It burst open with such a defiant _pop_ that Lila wondered if the plant's sap consisted of some marvellous organic parallel of smokepowder. A dozen miniature black pearls spilled out onto her thumb and forefinger. And the smell that rose off them...she remembered that smell instantly.

"Meadefloss," she said. Danan Starling had held the root clasped in his cold little fist at West Harbour. Elanee nodded.

"The warlock sought me out to examine me on its properties and growing conditions some months ago. Now I understand why."

"And what are its properties?" Katriona demanded. She hadn't been at West Harbour, and was no doubt mystified.

"I was about to ask the same question," said Lila. "I thought you had to be dead to benefit from it."

"A single species of plant can have many effects, not all recorded in the books of knowledge. Not even in the Neverwinter Library. I would advise you against consuming the root. It is a popular and potent remedy for humans who suffer from slowness in their powers of digestion."

She pulled up a specimen to reveal a thick, twisting root as black as the seeds. That was what Danan had held. His mother must have kept some in her store of medicinal herbs. Had she given a root to her youngest son at the very last, after realizing there was no escape, and no rescue coming? Lila felt herself staring down into the subterranean passages where her mind had wandered for too long the previous year.

"What about the seeds?" she asked, careful not to look at Elanee's eyes or at the black root lying on her palm.

"Highly poisonous." Lila made a great show of ridding herself of the seeds, wiping her hands on her breeches as ineffectual but elaborate precaution. "To snipes and sparrows," Elanee finished.

As Luan and Eyepatch laughed, the deadness that had been gathering in her heart seemed to fracture in response to the men's mirth, whether it was genuine or not. She even felt capable of pardoning Katriona, who had, after all, only been trying to express a fair and reasonable opinion, however wrong it ultimately was. "And the leaves?" she asked.

"Are supposed to have a mildly restorative effect. More importantly, they and the stems are edible, and contain moisture. Every part of the plant is harmful to shadows. This is the one thing in the whole valley you can eat that is certainly pure."

"You can still feel it then? The taint? The power of the King of Shadows?"

When Elanee answered, the smile had left her voice; so much so that Lila wondered if it had ever really been there at all. "Oh yes, Lila. He is here. More than ever."

They all stuffed their pockets and pouches with the leaves and stems, as Elanee instructed. While Katriona turned northwards, and the two soldiers with her, Lila chewed on a bitter stem, grateful for every drop of sap, and waited for Elanee. The druid was harvesting the plants, but not for their foliage. It was the roots that she was tucking within her pouch of thick bear-hide. Clearly, it was not just Lila who believed in being prepared for all eventualities.

The group hugged the bank of the river for the next part of their journey. Perhaps it lasted an hour, or half that, or twice as much. As a reason, Lila cited the need to find a good fording place. She was also eager to stay out of the shadow cast by the peak that had thrust itself up behind Redfell. Katriona identified it as Bald Kelin. Its grey severity and the harshness of its crags made it look like one of the Sword Mountains that had been dumped in the wrong place by an inattentive god.

The ground became firmer, and grass meadows replaced meadows of reeds, until Lila found herself climbing over a stone wall into a field that had apparently been used for grazing. Over the field, which was empty of sheep and cows, then over another wall, and another abandoned field. And another. And another. To their left, Hunter's Brook continued to be wide, dark and unhelpfully deep. As they moved further north, the river sank further away from the travellers, so that by the fourth field the banks were fifteen feet deep and getting deeper.

After surmounting yet another dry stone wall, it was with the indignation of surprise that Lila saw, not a field with a wall on the further side, but a field with a purple blaze of heather driving through it. And over the river – there was a bridge.

Lila strode towards it, delighted. Finally, to be homeward bound! And without the need to entrust herself to the cold waters of Hunter's Brook. She stopped at the edge of the heather, and turned her face in thanks to the sun. She only realized what she'd almost walked into when she walked over to inspect the bridge. It was a much larger structure than would be found in this half-wild half-settled land. She didn't understand why no one in the group had spotted it earlier. Its exterior was formed from uniform stone blocks and mortar. One hexagonal pillar delved down into the water to provide support. Stained marble slabs surfaced the crown and balustrade.

"This bridge – it's definitely not the one that was here before," said Katriona. "The one I crossed wasn't so much a bridge as a pile of rocks."

"Does it matter?" said Luan. He shifted from foot to foot in impatience to be on the move again. A few moments ago, and Lila would have been champing at the bit along with him, but that was before she'd realized what she was looking at.

To her right, the trail of heather flared on, as far as the side of Bald Kelin, where it terminated amidst scree and loose earth dislodged from the higher slopes by the last winter's storms. Once on the western bank, the heather, now mingled with bilberry bushes and cotton-sedge, advanced westwards, disappearing into the mouth of a narrow valley skirted with trees that broke off from the one they were in as if it was itself a tributary of the river.

"It's not a bridge, Luan," she said. "It's a viaduct." He looked blank. They probably didn't have many viaducts in New Leaf. "It was built more to carry a canal in mind than people."

The temptation to glance eastward nagged at her to see if anything had changed in the pyramid of scree that had tumbled to the hill's foot. Or to see if, perchance, the corners of an ancient earthwork might be just peeping around its edges.

"So what should we do?" said Katriona. "The way I see it, we can cross this bridge – or _viaduct_ , if that's what it is – or we try to cross the river right here – the only other choice is to keep going north."

"North-east, now," said Elanee. "The brook is curving eastwards, back towards its source in the mountains."

In step with Elanee and Katriona, she moved to the bank, and looked at the river fifteen feet below. The banks weren't that steep. All five of the group were in decent enough shape to cope with the scramble on both sides; and if they held hands as they crossed, that should be a sufficient defence against currents and missteps. The meadefloss should help them recover from any side-effects of their dip in waters claimed by him. Yet she hesitated before stating her case to the others.

"Don't Sir Darmon's lands begin somewhere near here?" She knew that one of the young knight's portfolio of estates in theory shared a border on the northern limit of the old territory that was attached to the Keep. In theory, because it had been decades if not centuries since the old boundaries had possessed a toehold in reality. Reality was brigands, village militias, and broken roads.

Elanee shrugged. Lines on maps drawn by generations of long dead humans in Neverwinter wouldn't be of much relevance to her. But Katriona looked interested.

"Yes – in fact, we could be in Darmon's lands already. The border lay between Redfell and Gornsudr." She paused. When she spoke again, her mood had changed completely. She glowed with excitement. "He's never bothered with the dales, but on their north-western edge past Deramoor, he's got a tower house. Calls it 'Fort Revier'. She pulled a face in disdain, though enthusiasm quickly took over her again. "It's not ten miles from here. Less even. It could be five miles away."

"And would it be manned? Supplied?" Her own excitement was rising in response to Katriona's. Lila twisted her hands together behind her back so that if they shook, it wouldn't be visible.

"In these times? In that place? I'm sure of it. I even heard him bragging about it when he visited Crossroad Keep. Has walls twice as thick as ours, he said." If Katriona was right, then they were practically saved. They would have strong walls around them long before sunset. The shadows that were probably lurking in ambush to the south could go on lurking in vain. Thinking back to the maps she'd studied both alone and in company with one or another of her friends, she thought she could recall a tower house a few miles west of the Neverwinter Road. Hadn't she and Neeshka laughed themselves sick at the name? Dun Leikbotty, or something of the sort. She couldn't blame Darmon for changing it, if it was indeed the same 'Fort Revier' that Katriona had mentioned.

She flexed her arms and shoulder blades. The prospect of a bath in the river no longer gave her cause for dread.

"Luan, you fucking nitwit!" barked Eyepatch. She looked around in confusion.

"But it's safe – Captain – see!" Luan was calling to her from the opposite bank. He must have slunk across the bridge while they were talking. Blast the boy. 'Fucking nitwit' was too weak a term for the provocation. And it was just the kind of thing she'd have done in his position. She still wanted to strangle him.

No shadows had appeared. They might yet, of course.

"Should we follow him?" Elanee asked.

"I suppose it can't cause any more problems," said Lila. "Yes. We'll follow the daft muppet."

The bridge was about twelve feet wide. Eight of those feet were full of heather, bilberries and young gorse bushes. Raised paths of small flattened cobble stones ran along the left and right sides close to the balustrades. The path on the right was cracked in some places, and seemed to threaten to drop any unwise burden directly into the river along with a load of masonry to see them on their way. The left side, where Lila walked, felt as solid as the Blacklake Bridge in Neverwinter. Despite the pleasing smoothness of the old pebbles under her naked feet, she left the path as soon as she could, though the cobbles did not end with the bridge. At intervals overgrown, they nevertheless continued beside the ex-canal for as far as the eye could see.

In the background she heard Katriona upbraiding Luan, but her thoughts were already tangled up with the group's next move. There was really only one possible choice.

"What did you think you were doing, man? If I'd known you had cheese sauce for brains, I'd have paid Edario to make a suit of armour for the smartest of the scullery mice, and put it in charge of the wagon instead of you. Don't you go getting any ideas again. If you feel one creeping up on you, run it past someone brighter than you first. A dead badger would do."

"I don't see what I did wrong!" Luan shouted. "We're where we ought to be. You were all just hanging around there arguing – you wouldn't have noticed if the shadows were doing a barndance around you."

"Was this all your training brought you? A tantrum in hostile territory after ignoring your officers? You're too young for this. You should never have been recruited." Ouch. Katriona could really twist the knife when she wanted too. When Luan spoke again, he sounded close to tears.

"I just want to go home. Even if you don't – even if you don't care if you die out here -"

"Luan," said Katriona with less of the drill sergeant about her, "We all want to get back to the Keep. But rushing off headlong into who-knows-what isn't going to help us." The squall was calming. Though storms still rose and fell in the voices behind Lila, the their initial violence was past.

Ahead of her, the dry canal headed westwards into a steep-sided valley. A gorge might be a more appropriate term. Couldn't go north because the hill there was too steep. Didn't want to go south because the enemy was waiting there. That left the west. Without waiting to argue her decision with the others, she set off. She was going to rush headlong into who-knows-what.

It did come as a relief when she heard the group hurry to catch up. A headlong rush was much more fun when in company. Well, it could depend on the company.

"I do not like it, Lila," said Elanee. "We should leave this path and _that_ -,"she indicated the strip of undergrowth that might once have transported goods across the heartlands of the Illefarn Empire.

"Yes," sighed Lila. "But we can't climb out of here yet. We've no rope, and the western face near the river was almost as bad. Believe me, I don't like it more than you. We'll get out of here just as soon as we find somewhere scalable that won't break our necks or have rocks falling on our heads."

Elanee seemed to accept her judgement, in that she didn't argue. Lila half-wished she would, or one of the others. But they were simply glad to be moving towards somewhere safe. The problem was, on this occasion she didn't trust her own judgement.

The gully was narrow, and partly filled with trees and bushes. The travellers were obliged to walk on the cobbled path, since there was nowhere else that would allow them to make easy progress save the canal itself. After about a mile, Lila crossed to the northern edge – or bank, as she increasingly thought of it – to inspect the rock face there more closely. Her foot sank two feet below the level of the path, and as she took another step, mud wormed and well up between her toes. After reaching the other path, she learned nothing about the cliff, except that it was too high, had few ledges, and a large number of overhangs, all of which she had known before already. What she had not noticed at first was the iron ring sticking out of the rock just above the ground. Another mile, and she had counted fourteen of them.

The tendrils of weeping willows sagged in green despondency and brushed against the faces of her companions, who still walked on the left-hand path. The moorland plants were gone from the canal trench; at present, it was full of grass and nettles, occasionally interrupted by pools of stagnant rain water. With every pool they passed, the humidity seemed to rise.

As Lila undid the ties of her jerkin and the laces near the neck of her tunic, she heard footsteps not far behind her. A willow tree, larger and older than all the previous ones, lay at a bend in the cutting. At first, Lila assumed that one of her companions had decided they were tired of being bashed in the eye unnecessarily.

She plodded onwards. A breeze chilled the nape of her neck. Shuddering, she looked around. There was no one on the path behind her. On the other side of the canal, Katriona, Luan, Elanee and Eyepatch were walking in single file, swatting flies and branches aside as they went. Feeling sick to the stomach, and keeping a hand on her sabre hilt, she moved on. Although she listened with an intensity that would have impressed Kana, the footsteps didn't recur. But she didn't relax her guard. The dingier alleys of Neverwinter had taught her the hard way not to dismiss unexplained noises.

"Did you hear that?" said Eyepatch. His phlegmatic manners for once couldn't disguise his unease. "A bell. I heard a bell ringing somewhere behind us."

"I heard nothing," said Elanee coolly. "What sort of bell? A temple bell?"

"Naught like that. It sounded just like – your regular hand-bell, right? Like the one that girl Shandra used to have to summon the geese for feeding time. You really heard nothing?"

They all shook their heads, Lila vigorously. She didn't want to add to the sense of panic. Everyone was already walking faster as a result of the bell that no one but Eyepatch had heard.

A hundred yards further on, the cutting grew wider. Some kind of long dark shape lay across the whole canal. Lila thought it might be a tree trunk.

"Hooves," said Elanee. "I heard hooves."

"Where?" Lila asked. As expected, Elanee pointed back towards the river valley. "Can you still hear them?"

Luan drew his sword. "Should we run?"

"No," Katriona replied, though the question had been addressed to Lila, and drawing her sword likewise. "Running targets are easier to pick off. Just keep your wits about you – if you have any, that is," she said, smiling with casual grimness. At times like this, the woman had a charisma that set her apart. It wasn't knightly valour, or the kind of dark light that gave men of Bishop's stamp their attraction. It was essence of drill sergeant, refined, distilled, and more reassuring than a draught of whiskey.

Her sabre in her right hand, and her knife in the left, Lila advanced on the ambiguous shape that lay ahead. It wasn't a tree trunk. Nor did it have a nest of shadows lying in wait behind it. What she had first sighted after rounding the bend in the cutting proved to be the upper rim of two vast wooden doors. As the twin paths went past them, they descended a slope and continued on, as before, but at a level ten feet lower than they had been. The same was true of the canal. Another pair of gates lay on their sides in a deep pool of water, having apparently rotted away from their supports.

The canal trench had been full of earth before the upright pair of gates; after them, and ten feet below the travellers, water was everywhere. Still water, patched with flowering lily pads, and lined with bulrushes. It was a beautiful sight, and sad as well. A frog's croak echoed around the pool beneath the gates. Lila caught a glimpse of its back legs before it vanished below the surface with a very unspectral _plop._

"Why did they build doors here?" Luan asked in bafflement. Lila couldn't help; she hadn't seen anything of the kind either. What did a load of water want with two sets of fucking enormous gates? And gates were expensive! The new ones she'd ordered built at the Keep to replace the old pair blown up by Qara cost as much as a year's bread and board for a platoon.

"I'm from Sembia," Eyepatch volunteered unexpectedly. "Leastways, I was born there, and it's full to choking with canals – well, in the south it is. They use 'em there to stop the fields from flooding, and for trade too. This thing here is called a lock, and those are lock gates. They let boats go up and down. Water never flows uphill, right? Not unless there's a mage-type casting a spell to trick it into thinking down is up and up is down. But with these gates, you don't need spells. Patience and elbow grease, sure, but not magic. Mystra could hand in her notice tomorrow, and no one in Daerlun would even get their feet wet."

"That sounds mad," said Luan. "Wouldn't the water eat through the wood a ten-day after the gates were in place?"

"These gates are a good deal older than a ten-day," said Lila. "For now. I'm not sure how much longer they'll stay like that." A few pieces of rusted metal lay at her feet. She guessed they had once belonged to a winching mechanism of some sort that had controlled the gates.

"Stairs," said Elanee.

"What?" Lila had no idea what the elf was talking about.

"Stairs. There are stairs behind you. Cut into the cliff face."

It was true. Narrow and worn, with nothing so luxurious as a handrail: it was no wonder that she had failed to see them initially. But stairs nonetheless.

Her four companions crossed the canal gingerly, although the section right before the lock gates was as thickly packed and dry as the paths.

"Up?" Lila asked. Ammon hadn't told her to shun ancient staircases. This one led in the right direction, northwards, aloft and back onto high ground.

"Up," Katriona confirmed. She went first, followed by Eyepatch, Elanee and Luan. Lila brought up the rear. As she put her foot on the lowest step, she took a last look at the scene of peaceful decay in the cutting. At the pools green with algae, and the aged masonry and fallen gates. Twenty yards further along the left-hand path, a grey heron stalked from a forest of bulrushes. It must have been there all the time, and moved so little that no one had remarked its presence. It resumed its hunched vigil beside a tiled storm drain.

The ascent was slow and long. Each step was more suited to a child's foot than that of a human adult. Only Elanee was able to climb them upright; Lila was immediately forced to rely on her hands and knees to keep her stable. Halfway up the cliff, the roots of a barren thorn-bush had left the stairs in disarray, rupturing their surfaces and planes and transforming them into a chequerboard of grips and slips. Lila had to wait for what seemed an age, bent double and clinging onto the step ahead of her, looking neither down nor up, before it was her turn to cross. Afterwards, to her relief, the climb became easier. The steps became a little broader, and regular. When she pulled herself onto an expanse of soft grass at the top, she discovered that someone had even placed a marker stone a the head of the stairs.

She stood up. They were at the edge of a huge plateau. It spread out before her, a blend of field and moorland, which gently declined towards a line of trees whose crowns formed a rising diagonal, driven into skew-whiff growth by the wind. Beyond, the plateau rose again, ending in a tumulus on which a large house stood.

"This must be Deramoor," said Katriona, grinning outright. "From the northern end, we should be able to see Fort Revier. Perhaps the Neverwinter Road too."

"It's nice up here," said Luan. 'Nice' was not the word Lila would have chosen, but she knew what he meant. She spread her arms wide and leant back, turning her face to the sun. A mild breeze cooled her skin. Foxgloves shook their purple heads amongst green and golden blades of grass, cornflower and yarrow and other meadow flowers unknown to her. Above her, the sky was pure blue, as blue as only a perfect summer's day could be. The aches and pains that had been tormenting her fled.

"What do you think, Elanee?" she asked. "Is this an improvement?"

"Anything is an improvement on that tainted gorge," the druid replied.

"Can you feel his power up here?"

Elanee shook her head, unsmiling. "I feel nothing."

Deramoor felt like an island in a rough sea. The hills of the east and south rolled towards them as Lila stared out at the vista from the cliff's brink. She recognised the conical top of Bald Kelin, Redfell's furrowed slopes and the flat brow of Haresrun. Further west were more hills that she didn't know, nor much cared to, though she knew that if she walked south for ten miles over ridges of heather and peat, she'd find herself on the summit of Marl side, as familiar to her as the beer and steamed pudding in her uncle's tavern, and be able to look down on the turrets and battlements of Crossroad Keep.

"I'm sure they're back already," said Katriona, following Lila's gaze.

"Hm?"

"The men. They fled into farmland south of the road. Haven't had any hills to climb. They're probably having lunch in the mess right now."

"You really think so?" said Lila, recalling the innumerable shadows that writhed in the setting sun all across the Great East Road.

"They'll be fine," said Katriona."After all," she added, " _I_ trained them. And Draygood's got his head screwed on the right way. He'll keep them in order, I don't doubt."

"If you're right, there'll be search parties or scouts setting out. But they'll think we're dead, at the Keep. Last seen surrounded and horrifically outnumbered, about to be mown down."

"Unlikely. They know you too well, Lila." Katriona smiled, a glint in her eye. "And they know me too. They won't give us up for lost just yet."

A heat haze lay over the summits of the hills. Closer, by a clump of thorn trees, small birds were fluttering to and from their nests. For now, Lila found it easy to accept her sergeant's confidence as entirely right and justified. She smiled back. "I believe you. Okay, so it's north over Deramoor, and then down towards Fort Revier."

After waiting for Eyepatch to return from emptying his bladder behind a bush – how it was possible that his body had any moisture left to lose was a mystery to her – the group set off again. She didn't trouble herself with thoughts about what might be in the kitchen of the house that overlooked their hike through the blossoming heath. Most probably the house was deserted, the cupboards empty. In any case, she had a new fantasy to propel her tired feet onward: herself and the other four being ushered into a whitewashed old tower house by a cluster of astonished guards in the livery of Neverwinter. 'Captain Farlong!' one of them would say. 'This is a surprise. What brings you here?'

Perhaps Darmon himself would be there. He'd attempted to pay court to her once, sending gifts to amuse her. A parrot. A strange kind of drum from the Spine of the World. A string of Calim pearls. His interest had arisen shortly after Nasher had presented her with the Keep; the tokens of his affection – less the parrot, whom Neeshka now owned and whom she called Helm – ended up being sold off along with many other unsolicited presents from strategically-minded suitors to pay the builders. She thought suddenly of Ammon, who'd given her an old sabre on a long loan.

It was a pity about Darmon. About his avarice or political single-mindedness or whatever it was. But if Fort Revier was as, and where, she hoped it would be, all would be forgotten. He would be restored in her estimation to the laughing knight who'd taken his men out to drink in The Sunken Flagon, and footed every copper of the bill himself. For months afterwards, she'd wanted to _be_ Darmon.

"What are you going to do when you get back to the barracks?" she heard Eyepatch say as he ambled beside Luan.

"Why are you asking?" Luan didn't sound perfectly trusting.

"Don't look at me like that. It's not a game. I'm just curious, is all."

"I don't see why. I won't do anything special. Maybe write to my family so they know I'm okay. And then read. That lad as works for Aldanon gave me a book from the library. A soldier's diary from fifty years ago. I thought he was mad when he gave it to me, but I've ended up really getting into it...it's the way he's interested in everything and everyone. Everyday things count as much with him as battles, and the men digging the privies have as much to say as the officers. You feel you're there, and he's sitting by a fire on campaign and telling you all about his life."

Eyepatch snorted. "It's not you're mate in the library who's mad! Lad, you _are_ a soldier. What do you want to read about someone else in the same line of work as you? Here's what you should do: get back to the old castle, and ask for leave, starting A.S.A.P. Then you take yourself off to Neverwinter or Waterdeep or anywhere with a few good taverns, and you take the prettiest girl you see there on your knee and tell her _your_ story. About fighting shadows, and all that."

"I'd rather read," said Luan.

"Read!" Eyepatch shook his head in exasperation, and turned to Lila for support. "He just wants to read, and there's women up and down the country crying out for want of him. Isn't that a selfish thing? Go on, Captain, what do you say?"

A pink fog was spreading along Luan's neck. "I don't like the women in the taverns," he muttered.

Lila smiled, but didn't answer, not wanting to involve herself too closely in Eyepatch's banter. She wasn't sure if it was headed towards procurement or matchmaking.

"So what are you going to do when you get back to the Keep?" she asked him to deflect his current train of thought.

Eyepatch grinned. His face creased into a hundred lines of wry amusement. "Oh. you know me, Captain... I'm going to say my prayers and go to bed, like a good boy..."

"I wouldn't have imagined anything else," she said, and winced at the dry ache in her throat. She chewed on a wodge of meadefloss leaf and stem; it didn't make her less thirsty, but it did have a soothing influence on her desiccated larynx.

They were approaching the trees. Rowan and aspen, mainly. The belt of spindly woodland was thicker than it had seemed from a distance. Its floor was composed of moss, and earth, and rotting pieces of wood. Despite the gales that the trees had endured, they had still pushed out a fine thick crop of leaves, making the most of their brief highland summer.

Hanging from many of the branches were peculiar charms: a ring of wood, not more than an inch thick, suspended by a leather thong, and with a primitive face cut out of the centre. Nothing more complex than eyes and a mouth. On some the mouth turned upwards in a smile, on others plaintively downward. Lila reckoned there must be more than two hundred of the things in that part of the wood alone, and, while some might have been left there yesterday, the more shrunken, worm-eaten heads could have been turning in the hilltop winds for as long as she'd been been alive.

"Karregs," said Katriona. "I made them when I was a child to hand in the orchard. But I used turnip more often than wood. You could get more detail in without the splinters and cracks."

"I made them too," said Luan. "But in New Leaf they're called Heegies. And I cut out suns on mine, not faces." He paused. "We'll make another the next time I go back, me and my sister. It was fun."

"Why make the things at all?" said Lila. It had slowly dawned on her, after leaving her mad little swamp village, that weirdness was by no means monopolized by the swamp villages. Every string of houses numerous enough to have a name would also be guarding a dark secret, a collective delusion, or a kind of shared blindspot. In Neverwinter, for example, there was an ill-kempt old man who insisted on living in an outdoor privy, and over time the locals had accepted this state of affairs as entirely normal, looking askance at travellers who suggested that the man should be restored to his natural habitat, that was to say, to an asylum for the spiritually deranged.

"Tradition, I think," said Luan. "It's what we've always done." Lila was glad this macabre tradition hadn't crossed into the merelands. The grinning, leering, sobbing faces wouldn't have done much to lighten the sour milk fogs that spurled out of the pools, and mingled with the sea mists.

"Yes, but why? What's the _point_?"

"I dunno that there is one. Does there have to be?"

Lila couldn't answer that. Had she been keeping company with soldiers and mages too much, she wondered, to train her to look at once for a clear purpose behind every act? Dancing didn't have a lot of point to it either, or drinking wine from Tethyr instead of cut-price from Amn, but she had still done both.

"My grandmother said I should say a prayer when I hung a new karreg up on a tree," said Katriona. "Not to any god by name. Just to whichever was listening."

That made a kind of sense, though by the standards of the Neverwinter temples, the practice would be judged as extremely heterodox. Priests tended to view piety as being best expressed through donations of coin, the larger the better. These ornaments weren't a natural part of modern religion. What did the gods want with unlucrative trinkets?

"We are treading on prayers," said Elanee. She was right. The mulch that had gathered on the floor was doubtless fed by these offerings, decayed smiles crumbling under the press of each footstep.

Sharp juniper blended into the boisterous smell of sheep and of – something else. Clear of the trees was a field of short-cropped grass. A flock of about forty sturdy sheep along with numerous lambs of that spring's vintage were the mowers who kept the field well-trimmed. As the ewes saw the travellers appear on the border of their territory, they set up a bawling, and the lambs who had been daring to run around the bracken-topped knolls to the east came racing back to their mothers, arriving straight at their teats, and tugging and glugging with all the power of their little bodies.

"Anyone here milked a ewe before?" Lila asked.

"Of course," said Katriona. "But a better question is – anyone caught a ewe before? There's a reason shepherds have dogs and sheepfolds."

"There are five of us," said Lila. "I'm sure two humans, or a human and an elf must be worth as much as one sheepdog." Katriona's eyelashes trembles, and her mouth creased in what might be the foretaste of some tart pleasure.

"We will see," she croaked. Despite the scepticism, Lila guessed she'd be as game as the rest of them with a drink of fresh milk as the prize.

First they had to reach the field. A large dry ditch was in the way. Not a canal, thankfully. It was probably an alternative to a wall for a farmer who hadn't fancied lugging more stone up from the local quarry than he absolutely had to.

"Be careful," said Elanee, pointing to something that lay just where Lila had been going to put her foot. It was a rusting trap. The folding kind, with teeth. This one wouldn't have posed any threat to her, however. It's iron jaws had already snapped shut around some small animal, of which only the bones remained.

"A rat," said Elanee. "It was a rat."

"Extreme, this trap, don't you think?" said Lila.

"You think the farmers should just let the predators carry off their lambs?" Katriona drawled. "I'd expect her-" she meant Elanee "- to think that, but not you."

"I've seen these things being sold by the armourer's guild. They're supposed to be able to break a cavalry charge."

"Doesn't mean they can't work on foxes too," said Katriona.

Once in the ditch, Lila detected the smell she'd noticed earlier. It was stronger this time. Nor had it escaped the others. The nervous way they glanced around and twitched their fingers told her that. She followed her nose a short way along the ditch, and discovered the source; it was the stinking remains of a lamb. The carcass was open, and the guts within were blackening. Anything might have been responsible for the creature's death: sickness, a fall, a wild beast, a bad-tempered ewe.

Lila quickly looked away, and climbed into the field, where the living animals grazed and bleated. No one mentioned the lamb. Instead, they moved towards the flock.

"What about that one?" A plump ewe with one lamb was tearing up the grass a little distance away from her cohort.

"As good as another," said Katriona, before they split up and, each person holding their arms wide, encircled the lamb and the ewe. As they closed ranks, the ewe realized what was happening, and bolted through a gap to freedom, the lamb close behind.

They tried again with another ewe, this one next to the flock. It and its companions took flight to a far corner of the field near a fence that rounded the foot of the tumulus.

"Elanee? You really can't do anything?" said Lila.

"My spells have not returned," she replied. "I fear that even if they had, I would have no power to control their behaviour. The spells I prepare are aimed at defending us against dire wolves and mountain bears. Not against sheep."

Lila really wanted that drink. She normally hated milk on its own. Now the thought of it made her heart race as if she was close to the fountain of everlasting youth.

Speed had failed. That meant she'd have to count on her wits. If she could get hold of a lamb, that might make the mother easier to catch...

After pursuing the sheep to their retreat, she did manage to snatch up a lamb in her arms. It bleated loud enough to be audible on the next hill, wriggling and kicking, and – she realized – shitting, as it yelled its indignation out across the valleys.

"Shut the fuck up, my darling," Lila hissed. "It's not for long. You'll be back with your mother soon."

All four of her companions, she noticed, were looking with curiosity at something a little to her left. She realized what was happening just a moment too late, when getting out of the way was not an option. As the ewe's skull made contact with her thigh, she was able to reflect, before falling over, that it was a stroke of luck the flock had been de-horned. The lamb scrambled out of her arms and rejoined its mother, where it comforted itself by draining the udder of milk and urinating at the same time.

Lila stayed prone on the ground, partly from pain, and partly from humiliation. The others, having caught up with her, burst out laughing. Katriona stopped to offer her a hand up, and then started again.

"You had that coming," said a voice. A male voice, unaccented, and not belonging to either Eyepatch or Luan. Lila looked around.

The speaker was a half-elf. Brown-eyed, brown-haired, and with a weathered face. His feet – covered by hunting boots – were standing on the lowest rung of the fence that divided field from farmhouse. A bow was in his hand, and drawn, and it was aimed at her.


End file.
